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The Judging Eye VI


Nerdanel

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Well, I figured that since nobody had started a new Judging Eye thread, I would have to do it. This is just a little starter post though so that we don't end up with duplicate topics. I'm going to write a proper reply to some of the things raised in the previous thread after this.

For the people who haven't read The Judging Eye yet, go away and read it! It's a great book and this thread is expected to be full of unmarked spoilers.

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Speaking of tearing down others' outlandish theories, I doubt that Bakker was hinting that Down= Hell. We don't even know if Hell is down in Earwa. It might be to the left or right or even up since that is where the Inchies come from. Personally, I think Hell is waiting for a new book from my favorite authors, but maybe that is just me.

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First!

Haha, I have nothing to contribute aside from that. This thread, however insightful and remarkable it becomes, will forever be tarnished by a completely asinine and unhelpful first response.

Akka's the shit and WLW can't come soon enough.

Shame on you!

Speaking of tearing down others' outlandish theories, I doubt that Bakker was hinting that Down= Hell. We don't even know if Hell is down in Earwa. It might be to the left or right or even up since that is where the Inchies come from. Personally, I think Hell is waiting for a new book from my favorite authors, but maybe that is just me.

I agree with you there although I do agree that the constant swirling down of death has some strange meaning. Plus it sounds cool.

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The Synthese is clearly not just an artifact of sorcery, and it was known to Mandate for thousands of years. I guess you're asking whether or not I have any evidence that they were around in Nonman times, and that's clearly no - but it seems a fairly common belief here that the Synthese is just a shell for inchies and the real control is far away.

I was indeed meaning the pre-Consult Inchoroi... I know that the Syntheses are made by Tekne, but how are they controlled from afar? If the pre-Consult Inchoroi didn't have that useful capability, it could be that Aurang is using magic to project his soul, something that we know can be definitely achieved with magic. Remember that the original Inchoroi didn't believe in afterlife and might not have believed in souls either.

Okay, there you go with that 'takes the souls of others' bit.

Show me one place in the book where it even hints that this happens. Just once.

Ok, here is a hint in two parts:

He spent quite some time trying to puzzle through what had happened, to make sense of the crazed image of her, holding nothing but a Chorae, the same existential pit she carried beneath her belt now, quailing beneath a horror that should have devoured her whole, from the flesh of her fingertips to the final spark of her soul.

So Achamian thinks the Wight-in-the-Mountain could have devoured Mimara in some unspecified fashion, including her soul.

And here is a quote from a few pages previous:

The damned call out to them, wailing with the hunger that knots and strangles and sustains all misery...

Yearning to see itself visited upon others.

Here Mimara perceives that thing that the damned hunger for is causing misery to others. The damned in this passage are probably dead Emwama, but I hope nobody disputes that the Wight-in-the-Mountain is also a damned soul. Thus, if you believe that the hunger the Wight-in-the-Mountain talks about in the bits I haven't bother to quote is the same type of hunger the other damned feel, it stands to reason that "devouring" for him really means torturing. And since Achamian thinks the Wight-in-the-Mountain could "devour" Mimara's soul that equates to torturing her soul, demon-style. To be able to do that, he needs to be able to... trap her soul.

We have no idea how whore's shells work. That's a hypothesis that is likely wrong, by the way; we discussed that before. But think about this: it stops conception and does not cause a miscarriage.

Even if it turns out that the mechanism of whore's shells hasn't been explained in the books, the mechanism behind Wathi dolls most definitely has been. Withches can trap souls and bind them to objects. Period.

More to come...

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Speaking of tearing down others' outlandish theories, I doubt that Bakker was hinting that Down= Hell. We don't even know if Hell is down in Earwa. It might be to the left or right or even up since that is where the Inchies come from. Personally, I think Hell is waiting for a new book from my favorite authors, but maybe that is just me.

Inri Sejenus is said to have ascended to the Nail of Heaven. If Heaven is that way and Hell the other way, Hell would be downwards from the Eärwan geography, even if the souls of the damned pass through the planet and end up in the outer space on the other side.

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I got it!!! Death came swirling down is a metaphor. The No-God had a swirling tornado of death when he was around. Ergo, the No-God equals Death. Death came swirling down means the No-God came down in his tornado of whatever the hell the outside is made of and picked up the souls of those killed. That must be it.

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It sounds like battle is a giant toilet, and when people die they're getting swirlies.

It was one of the stupidest phrases to repeat I'd witnessed. Just ugh.

In all honesty I liked it, although I don't remember it getting used so many times. Swirling down is kind of how I imagine death, it gets all fuzzy around the outside of your vision and it feels like you are falling or swirling.

Re: Thread Description "Her sixth sense sees damned people".

That isn't from the book is it? And if it isn't I wouldn't exactly call it her "sixth sense" nor are we certain that it sees damned people (at least I think so, there were some things that Akka decided not to tell us in TJE).

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it could be that Aurang is using magic to project his soul, something that we know can be definitely achieved with magic.
We know what? If we knew souls could be protected via magic, what on earth are Aurax and Aurang doing?

Completely nonsensical.

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In all honesty I liked it, although I don't remember it getting used so many times. Swirling down is kind of how I imagine death, it gets all fuzzy around the outside of your vision and it feels like you are falling or swirling.

I thought it was weird at first, but I liked it too by the end. It went well with his very overhead view descriptions of battles.

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Ah, my bad.

We don't know how Aurax and Aurang project their souls or even if they do; I suspect that they are more like waldos than magical soul storing devices.

So Achamian thinks the Wight-in-the-Mountain could have devoured Mimara in some unspecified fashion, including her soul.
I think you're being a bit too literal here. I don't think Akka was thinking that the wight would actually eat Mimara.

Here Mimara perceives that thing that the damned hunger for is causing misery to others. The damned in this passage are probably dead Emwama, but I hope nobody disputes that the Wight-in-the-Mountain is also a damned soul. Thus, if you believe that the hunger the Wight-in-the-Mountain talks about in the bits I haven't bother to quote is the same type of hunger the other damned feel, it stands to reason that "devouring" for him really means torturing. And since Achamian thinks the Wight-in-the-Mountain could "devour" Mimara's soul that equates to torturing her soul, demon-style. To be able to do that, he needs to be able to... trap her soul.
Err, no. They hunger means they desire. Not that they want. They want to inflict misery. But there's nothing there about doing it on the soul, and it looked like they were perfectly able to inflict misery on the flesh happily.

Which is what they desire, after all.

Even if it turns out that the mechanism of whore's shells hasn't been explained in the books, the mechanism behind Wathi dolls most definitely has been. Withches can trap souls and bind them to objects. Period.

More to come...

Or at least that's what they think they can do. We've still not seen the mechanism, and the Wathi doll appeared to be doing more of Akka's bidding than anything else.

Really, that's one of the more elusive points in the series - what is a soul? Is it currency, is it reincarnative material, is it a renewable resource or a continually produced one? Why do some inchie constructs have one and some not? I think that's really the problem of the argument - there's such vagaries about what souls are and aren't that basing anything on that concept is building your house on sand.

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Kellhus mentions during his encounter with Aurang or Aurax possessing Esmi that there were Mangaecca huddled around his true flesh singing Cants. If the Synthese were products of the Tekne, why the need for Cants?
Wow, I didn't catch that at all. Interesting. So if it's a magical concoction only, that means the No-God can't be controlled from afar thanks to the Chorae.
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Well, my current house of sand (and fog) is that the No-God is sort of an antisoul. It is completely in its own little universe (like a No-Ship from Dune IIRC) and is unaffected by the tides of the Outside. It seems remarkably similar to the Dunyain version of a self moving soul but maybe I'm reaching a little here and my sand house is crumbling. Either way, from now on I will call the No-God the Soul Chorae. At least until I tire of it or someone comes up with something better.

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I think that (or something like it) is pretty close to what is true, and it fits the narrative of Kellhus eventually becoming the No-God. A self-moving soul that is unfazed by the Outside would seem to lack things like self-awareness if you assume that the soul is the self.

See, that's one of the things I thought the Chorae were there for: not only for personal defense, but to stop the invasion of the Outside and of God's influence on the No-God. By encasing it in chorae, it can't be influenced by soulful things. Similar in concept to the Zahn Star Wars books, where they created clones by using anti-force shields around the tanks so that the clones created were outside of it, protected in that bubble of anti-force.

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I'm not sure Kellhus is trying to reach that goal anymore, though. Most of his thoughts in TTT seem to point at him being different somehow. Maybe he believes he is a prophet and is saved from damnation. I don't know though. I have to think about this some more.

I agree that the chorae were probably there for the reasons you specify, Kalbear. That makes the most sense of all the theories I've read. I haven't read the Zahn stories for years so the memories are a little dusty. I'm gonna have to go reread Thorsten's theories again. Maybe some ideas will pop up.

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A side effect of the above theory is that it fits well with what we know of the Heron Spear, which was described as a sort of laser. Laser effects don't really blow things up (unless they're xray lasers, but we know Heron Spear isn't).

What it does is pierce.

So you could imagine that if I'm right, piercing the shell of the No-God causes the Outside to leak in, which would be ultimately fatal in the same way that piercing a vacuum tube causes it to lose vacuum.

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