Jump to content

Bakker's TGO Excerpts II: Mining our Merest Fraction [Spoilers]s


Recommended Posts

Courtesy of @Kalbear

Since at least one excerpt came out today and people want to discuss it - and more importantly, people want to NOT discuss it - I wanted to create a spoiler thread. 

Here's the link to the excerpt (oops, forgot this earlier). This is the link to the Prologue (Momemn) and Great Ordeal chapters.

The second link is to the full chapter of Ishual. Parts of this had been released previously.

The prologue excerpt begins like this:

Prologue: Momemn
And naught was known or unknown, and there was no hunger.
All was One in silence, and it was as Death.
Then the Word was spoken, and One became Many.
Doing was struck from the hip of Being.
And the Solitary God said, “Let there be Deceit.
Let there be Desire.”
——The Book of Fane

 

Which is pretty cool. 

The Great Ordeal is scheduled currently to be out early July this year. The Unholy Consult, which is the conclusion of this miniseries and the second half of the split book, is currently due out next year. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, am I kind of the only one who thinks this will end all wrapped up in a nice bow, Mimara forgiving all the souls in the Outside*, the God reunited, and the inhabitants of Earwa finally experiencing genuine love and grace for the first time ever?

 

Is Damnation a thing because in desiring, we always "sin" against another part of God, and since no Son is privileged over the others, there can be no true forgiveness coming from an actual, all-knowing divine being on the outside looking? Is Mimara going to assume that mantle, and become the Whole that will absolve souls of their transgressions against the Parts?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@lokisnow, this is for you.

Quote

So, am I kind of the only one who thinks this will end all wrapped up in a nice bow, Mimara forgiving all the souls in the Outside*, the God reunited, and the inhabitants of Earwa finally experiencing genuine love and grace for the first time ever?

If you're expecting a happy ending you've not been paying attention. 

Damnation I think is a thing regardless of desire. Desire doesn't create damnation. The Judging Eye has never closed. No, what desire does is make people want to do things that beget damnation. Before desire there was no, well, desire to do anything that would make you damned. Everyone could lead a righteous life. Why wouldn't they? What other possible motive would they have than to avoid being bad? And they could see what would cause them to be damned, so they could avoid it for the most part. Maybe they'd accidentally damn themselves, but otherwise they knew how to live. (note that 'they' here is nonmen, who were the originals on Earwa). 

But then souls had desire. Then the split happened. Now you had to fight with yourself. You knew what you were not supposed to do, but you wanted to do it so very much. And you had a part of you that could rationalize away anything.

Again, the world ends with an apocalypse. One way or another. Does your version of God being reunited sound apocalyptic?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really think that Mimara will be involved in awakening the God. Imho, I don't see as of now, where she even has the power to forgive(of damnation) a soul, Let alone the entirety of the Outside. And as others have said, maybe its her and Akka's child that's the true Savior. Whoever it is, I don't think it'll be wrapped up by the end of TUC. But yes, I think you and Kalbear have hit the nail on the head, and the God becoming whole again is how this story will end. Whenever that might be, lol.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Baztek said:

So, am I kind of the only one who thinks this will end all wrapped up in a nice bow, Mimara forgiving all the souls in the Outside*, the God reunited, and the inhabitants of Earwa finally experiencing genuine love and grace for the first time ever?

Is Damnation a thing because in desiring, we always "sin" against another part of God, and since no Son is privileged over the others, there can be no true forgiveness coming from an actual, all-knowing divine being on the outside looking? Is Mimara going to assume that mantle, and become the Whole that will absolve souls of their transgressions against the Parts?

More upbeat than what I think will happen -> Mimara (or perhaps her child) will show a way toward the God of Gods and the remnants of Earwa in the final trilogy will have to work to oppose the Archons/Hundred.

So no definitive positive state but better than the status quo.

I suspect Kellhus + No-God will find a way to shut the world from the Hundred but this will lead to terrible repercussions that have to be corrected in the final trilogy.

6 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

I really think that Mimara will be involved in awakening the God. Imho, I don't see as of now, where she even has the power to forgive(of damnation) a soul, Let alone the entirety of the Outside. And as others have said, maybe its her and Akka's child that's the true Savior. Whoever it is, I don't think it'll be wrapped up by the end of TUC. But yes, I think you and Kalbear have hit the nail on the head, and the God becoming whole again is how this story will end. Whenever that might be, lol.

Yeah all the stuff about Mimara being able to forgive damnation hinge on a single line AFAICTell. I think she forgave her would be rapist but this did nothing to change his after life state. Kellhus' experience pretty much confirms this in my mind - it didn't matter whether one is good or evil in this life, sinful or pure.

So long as the Hundred + Sons rule the Outside you end up trapped unless perhaps you are Cish.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

@lokisnow, this is for you.

If you're expecting a happy ending you've not been paying attention. 

Damnation I think is a thing regardless of desire. Desire doesn't create damnation. The Judging Eye has never closed. No, what desire does is make people want to do things that beget damnation. Before desire there was no, well, desire to do anything that would make you damned. Everyone could lead a righteous life. Why wouldn't they? What other possible motive would they have than to avoid being bad? And they could see what would cause them to be damned, so they could avoid it for the most part. Maybe they'd accidentally damn themselves, but otherwise they knew how to live. (note that 'they' here is nonmen, who were the originals on Earwa). 

But then souls had desire. Then the split happened. Now you had to fight with yourself. You knew what you were not supposed to do, but you wanted to do it so very much. And you had a part of you that could rationalize away anything.

Again, the world ends with an apocalypse. One way or another. Does your version of God being reunited sound apocalyptic?

I'm still gonna argue that desire and damnation are intertwined, and that there was no existence, nothing to speak of ("Nothing known or unknown"), before the God was sundered. It even says "Doing was struck from the hip of Being", as in, soon as the parts had some agency, some free will with which one part might oppose another part, that was the Sundering, and the beginning of the Outside and eventually Earwa.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Something that Kalbear just said made a lightbulb go off. The Nonmen were the original inhabitants of Earwa. But, Earwa isn't the actual planet. On the map, Emwanna(sp) is to the east, so men probably existed in this world at the same time, only as primitive beings(without souls?). I think that this all points to the Breaking of the Gates being the event that splintered the God. The Breaking of the Gates is what gave humans a soul. This is when they first met their Gods. And, I've always wondered if sorcery and such exists in Emwanna, just to the East a little bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Or as @Baztek just said, the Breaking of the Gates was when humans gained free will. Thus creating deceit and desire, thus creating the 100.

But we're talking about how the "One becomes Many", I mean I guess you could conceivably say the Sundering is what ensouls an inert humanity but it's still cleaner to just imagine the One as equivalent to prenatal unconsciousness (but for all of reality, and is exactly how it is understood in many esoteric systems) and the Many as lived life, instead of positing all this prior history and temporal causes for a transcendent event. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Baztek said:

But we're talking about how the "One becomes Many", I mean I guess you could conceivably say the Sundering is what ensouls an inert humanity but it's still cleaner to just imagine the One as equivalent to prenatal unconsciousness (but for all of reality, and is exactly how it is understood in many esoteric systems) and the Many as lived life, instead of positing all this prior history and temporal causes for a transcendent event. 

Yeah I really don't think the God split in the course of the Bakkerverse's history. As per the K6BD comic I linked to above the Sundering is what results in the Bakkerverse.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

But, as discussed in the last thread, it seems to point to an event or someone who caused the God to be sundered. Plus, I like the idea of pointing to an event that caused all souls to be damned. :)

I don't know...the Fane quote seems to point to a Nondualistic existence (neither known nor unknown) that ends up changing due to the Logos which sets existence into motion.

Seems to echo creation stories from the Hindu and/or Neoplatonic heritage?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

But, as discussed in the last thread, it seems to point to an event or someone who caused the God to be sundered. Plus, I like the idea of pointing to an event that caused all souls to be damned. :)

But I think if we find out "whodunit" it won't be something, I don't know, as kind of thematically banal as "event x happened, ergo God is bad now", but it might be an attempted answer (in the context of the Bakkerverse anyways) that a lot of skeptics lobby at Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions: Namely, if the Ultimate Reality is perfection, why is there maya (illusion)? Or if we all have Buddha-nature, why are we ignorant of it?

 

Where did this ignorance steal into? Buddhism speaks of a primordial thirst for existence, where did it come from? Is there a flaw in even the Absolute? Is there just a scream at the bottom of things, are we doomed to be stuck suffering and desiring in this closed system that is existence because of some unknowable, inexplicable flaw that splits the heart of everything "like a rotted stone"? Are we eternally fucked, at the whim of a metaphysical (or even meta-metaphysical, who knows how far this goes) machinery we will never know the first thing about?

 

I think these are much more interesting questions than "what the Nonmen/Inchoroi/humanity did to sunder God", but I understand I might end up eating my words. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You're probably right Sci. Though I doubt we'll get a definitive answer one way or another. I like the idea of it. But, thinking on it further, I don't think it would match up on the timeline, anyway. Whatever caused the God to splinter is probably what created Bakkerverse, that makes sense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

Yeah I really don't think the God split in the course of the Bakkerverse's history. As per the K6BD comic I linked to above the Sundering is what results in the Bakkerverse.

Okay - so answer me this, then. What is the central 'it' of the metaphysical whodunnit that Bakker has said this is? We might not have enough information, and that's cool (though seriously after 5 books not knowing kinda sucks) - but if it isn't the breaking of the God into the gods, what was it? 

And if it was, the 'who' part of the 'whodunit' kind of implies figuring out that mystery as an actor, no?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Okay - so answer me this, then. What is the central 'it' of the metaphysical whodunnit that Bakker has said this is? We might not have enough information, and that's cool (though seriously after 5 books not knowing kinda sucks) - but if it isn't the breaking of the God into the gods, what was it? 

And if it was, the 'who' part of the 'whodunit' kind of implies figuring out that mystery as an actor, no?

No, it's the breaking of the gods, it's just that if you have an actor, some kind of villain twirling his metaphysical moustache who is responsible for the breaking of the gods, things are no longer One, you kind of have to explain what this guy is doing existing in the One all by his lonesome. I mean I'm sure Bakker could sell if it he really wanted to, but I don't see it. I think the answer will be a philosophical one, not necessarily a historical event or person. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Baztek said:

No, it's the breaking of the gods, it's just that if you have an actor, some kind of villain twirling his metaphysical moustache who is responsible for the breaking of the gods, things are no longer One, you kind of have to explain what this guy is doing existing in the One all by his lonesome. I mean I'm sure Bakker could sell if it he really wanted to, but I don't see it. I think the answer will be a philosophical one, not necessarily a historical event or person. 

You're assuming what came before starts what came after. You're assuming the break was caused by something before it happened. You are Dunyain. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...