The Judging Eye VIII (spoilers)

[Kalbear]

I tend to think of the 'outside' as an infinite reflection of the souls of men - having some areas more infinite than others, so to speak. Numbers and piety tend to make each reflected region larger. We know that in the case of vast amounts of shared emotional trauma (a specific formless, yet pasionate type of belief through suffering) the outside can be made so real that it forms a topoi. Real world analogy, PTSD really does inform future actions without changing your acreted beliefs and opinions because it impacts so deeply in the primal psyche.

Which again would mean that as long as the Inchies had a great PR campaign they wouldn't have been damned.

Which is lame and doesn't make sense, since the nonmen thought they were pretty awesome. It also does the cheater way out and says that the world can be changed from shit to teh notsuck as long as you click your heels together three times and say 'there's no place like egalitarianism'.

Which is also lame.

[Curethan]

Which again would mean that as long as the Inchies had a great PR campaign they wouldn't have been damned.

Which is lame and doesn't make sense, since the nonmen thought they were pretty awesome. It also does the cheater way out and says that the world can be changed from shit to teh notsuck as long as you click your heels together three times and say 'there's no place like egalitarianism'.

Which is also lame.

Not so. That's misinterprative. I'm not arguing that its a solipistic system or that individuals have any manifestable determinant power.

The metaphysics remain fixed and you don't get to choose whether you are damned or not, because that's up to whichever gestalt belief system ends up with sway over your soul. You don't even get to choose what you believe because that is determined by where you are born and how you are raised. The only choice you really own is how fervently you believe - your piety. Kellhus binds souls easily because they have no choice, but he is limited in how he can use their existing beliefs... he has to include himself into Inrithism, to make himself the centre of that faith, and the ends of that manipulation are limited - the goal is to (supposedly) unite the 3S in order to oppose the consult, not to replace lies with truth or reverse damnation.

Perhaps some cases of damnation might be averted, but souls still have to go somewhere in the outside - I'm arguing that its based on whatever belief/convition owns you when you die. For the Fanim falling beneath the swords of the Men of the Tusk it means they likely will end up in Inrithi hell. Despite the fact that they don't believe in it, Inrithism claims their souls because of the victorious piety of the men who defeated them - their beliefs win, the battleground where men fall is the fulcrum of their clash of ideals.

Anyway, even in our world, have you ever tried to consiously change your own or anyone elses beliefs? If the pope decided to come out and say 'gayness is awesome, bumsex is blessed' would that change the way catholics veiw homosexuals or just the way that they veiw the pope? How much harder would it be in a world where it is almost impossible to transcend such paradigms - 4000 years and nobody has invented anything new, like steam engines or gunpowder, because new ideas are supressed by supernatural forces.

Edit: Whether the inchies are merely trying to escape damnation is debatable. They exterminated the non-men before they tried the same with humans. And they seem pretty much immortal. They claim to be born for damnation's sake and they seem to be attempting to change the world into a place where they are the authors and arbiters of damnation and absolution. (So killing 99% of humans is their PR campaign) I think of it as metaphysical teraforming. Certainly the consult are in on it to escape damnation though.

Anyway, what kind of damnation scares inchies - endless reruns of Bewitched?

[Rhadamanth]

So does this mean that the poor Nonmen who lived where the Inchi ship crashed ended up in an Inchi heaven? A lot of Inchies died when the ship crashed, certainly more than the number who died in any of the battles in the Holy War, seems like they would have made some impact in the Outside. :dunno:

[Curethan]

No. Intent is key. It's not the author of your destruction, but their intent in killing you as an expression of their gods' (or beliefs) movement in the world. If you catch my meaning. But that's just a suposition to illustrate my interpretation of Earwan metaphysics - how it might work in a specific circumstance where we know belief, gods and death are all involved.

But yeh, Golgotteroth is a topos.

[Kalbear]

Perhaps some cases of damnation might be averted, but souls still have to go somewhere in the outside - I'm arguing that its based on whatever belief/convition owns you when you die.

Right - which means that if you change the belief to, say, something that won't damn you specifically and hang out around them, you won't be damned. You'll go somewhere with unicorn rainbows and 72 virgins or whatever.

I guess there's a small difference in that you're not claiming that in the Outside, you can choose the belief; you're saying that there are Outside political parties, and you get judged based on whichever political party suits you best compared to the people around you. But that's still way too subjective and ultimately lame to me. Or maybe you're claiming that the Inri beliefs got created by people, and then depending on where you die and how you die determines if you fall to Inri hell or Faanim hell.

Which is really, really lame and goes into Piers Anthonian values of afterlife, which is one step away from new-age subjectivve crappiness and is even worse.

[aimlessgun]

But amidst the subjectivity is the truth that everything is predetermined anyways! Three pound brains cranking out their fated votes for the politics of the Outside.

[Curethan]

Razor, I'm claiming you get no choice. That's Bakker's whole bag, right? If you were born in a country under sharia law do you think you would be the same person? Our western cultures have a range of belief systems and teach critical thinking in our schools which, perhaps, give us the illusion that our beliefs are something we choose rather than something that defines us.

In exploring Earwan metaphysics, I'm starting from the assumption that beliefs rule the hearts of men. These beliefs predate you and own you. There is no way to just believe in something new (double unicorn rainbow... what does it mean, father?). One can't just convert, one must be converted. There are rules and they aren't determined by individuals. Suffering is the only explicit way to earn absolution in Earwa, whatever your faith. Doubters and non-believers go to hell. Women are inferior. These are things all believers (regardless of creed) 'know' or fear.

However, we also know there are various gods who judge according to slightly different measures. Even within Inrithism, there are all the different cults who have presumably been absorbed from initially seperate religons as aspects. We know there are demons who aren't worshipped at all (Ciphrang) who can subvert your destined damnation for one that they control. Presumably these are born of beliefs that don't hinge on the soul.

Your objections hinge on people defining their absolute beliefs out of nothing and that just doesn't happen, here or in Earwa. That is the new-age subjective crap, that one can choose to believe the world is all love and light and it will be so. I've known plenty of people who spout that crap whilst remaining selfish, petty and materialistic. I'm saying that in Earwa they would still go to hell because thats not how the metaphysics work, regardless of how many people believe the same shit.

[Kalbear]

But that's the thing - they absolutely DO come out of nothing. They're not literally told from on high. There's no evidence that Inri was particularly blessed or that Fanimry was more or less correct.

Now that is an interesting notion - that the Outside effective dictated these things and that Inri and Fanim were simply messengers of some external Outside force, telling people how things actually work. In that case they weren't defining the beliefs, they were simply saying the rules that had been defined in the Outside. I don't like the idea that if you're Fanim (or really if you're born in place x) that the rules are different for you than someone else; as I stated before, where do the Inchies fit in? Which damnation fits for them?

And that implies subjectivity, just not on Earth - it implies it in the Outside. If you could get enough power in the Outside and change things there you could tell people what's up on Earwa and be all cool, which again - giant copout.

[aimlessgun]

In what sense do you mean copout? Why are more flexible, feedback vulnerable phenomena a 'copout' compared to a less affectable outside?

Too anthropocentric? You'd rather have the natural laws of the outside be more in the vein the vast uncaring universe of the real world?

[Curethan]

But that's the thing - they absolutely DO come out of nothing. They're not literally told from on high. There's no evidence that Inri was particularly blessed or that Fanimry was more or less correct.

Now that is an interesting notion - that the Outside effective dictated these things and that Inri and Fanim were simply messengers of some external Outside force, telling people how things actually work. In that case they weren't defining the beliefs, they were simply saying the rules that had been defined in the Outside. I don't like the idea that if you're Fanim (or really if you're born in place x) that the rules are different for you than someone else; as I stated before, where do the Inchies fit in? Which damnation fits for them?

And that implies subjectivity, just not on Earth - it implies it in the Outside. If you could get enough power in the Outside and change things there you could tell people what's up on Earwa and be all cool, which again - giant copout.

I'm saying that they do operate under the same rules. They includes rules for conflict, spheres of influence with the 'real world' and different forms of damnation. The story explicitly deals with seperated outside agencies like Gilgaol, Ciphrang, Yatwer etc. And yeh, these outside 'belief systems' predate humans. But they have to be relatable to the human condition too because they are bound up with transactions in souls and they apparently effect events in Earwa, altering the balances of causality. Why would they do that if they weren't affected by the course of human history? And interesting that they seem to chose the insane or sociopaths to use.

Conphas muses about the glacial nature of the Scylvendi after Kiyuth. They are obsessed with custom, keep no history and haven't changed for thousands of years. And their god is dead.

I'm only speculating on the rules, but yeh, when you have gods and miracles and magical ninjas, subjective reality bending is gunna pop up somewhere down the line. But that doesn't have to imply that its possible to radicaly alter reality by merely altering perceptions, but allows that they are inter-related because belief, deception and absence of freewill are such a big deal.

Edit. But I guess thats what the inchies are ultimately doing - trying to make their happily ever after :P

[Nerdanel]

Err, no. The Thousandfold Thought is everyone under the support of the same God for the same goal. It's uniting the three seas. It's not the second inutteral. It's not about sorcery. It's about the conditioning of the entire world to accept Kellhus' reign.

The problem with that is that is one of those ideas with little evidence for them and significant open questions. It does not explain why the only occurrence of the term was in Moënghus's message to Kellhus. It also doesn't explain why Moënghus would need to include a vague mention of it in his message, given that uniting everyone under him is something that Kellhus, like any loose Dûnyain, would start working on right away, no hints necessary. It's not something that Kellhus could discover.

And the power doesn't increase. Teleporting a bit further than the horizon isn't that special compared to the other bits of power exhibited. The power becomes more specific. Instead of shouting with your voice you can move further.

Teleporting medium distance is massively powerful compared to being unable to teleport at all. More efficiency implies more power directed to where it matters, thus more powerful spells. This is why Gnostic sorcery is straight out more powerful than Anagogic. Standard war strategy would be very different indeed if ordinary sorcerers were able to create a whirlwind of debris around them, nullifying every chorae archer in the army. Kellhus's show of magic in the end signifies a major moment in the history of the Three Seas.

[Kalbear]

The problem with that is that is one of those ideas with little evidence for them and significant open questions. It does not explain why the only occurrence of the term was in Moënghus's message to Kellhus. It also doesn't explain why Moënghus would need to include a vague mention of it in his message, given that uniting everyone under him is something that Kellhus, like any loose Dûnyain, would start working on right away, no hints necessary. It's not something that Kellhus could discover

Other than the actual talk with Moe, you're right - it's not mentioned. It's not that special other than it being the whole issue with the book.

And since that's what it is as Moe actually tells Kellhus, I don't see the disspute. There's textual evidence for what it is in the books. There's not for what you're saying it is. I'd rather go with what the books actually say it is instead of assuming that Moe's lying.

Teleporting medium distance is massively powerful compared to being unable to teleport at all. More efficiency implies more power directed to where it matters, thus more powerful spells. This is why Gnostic sorcery is straight out more powerful than Anagogic.

But it has nothing to do with using more power. It has to do with wasting less and being more specific. You still don't understand that and never have. Gnostic sorcery vs anagnosis is the difference between using a bazooka to start a fire by blowing up some wood, then crafting some weapons using that fire, vs using a bazooka as a weapon. Both start with the same power source and have the same amount of power behind them; one directs that power in a more precise way.

There is no analog in Cish magic, since that is based entirely on raw emotion.

Standard war strategy would be very different indeed if ordinary sorcerers were able to create a whirlwind of debris around them, nullifying every chorae archer in the army. Kellhus's show of magic in the end signifies a major moment in the history of the Three Seas.

They can. Akka does this several times.

It signifies a major moment in history because Kellhus is a sorcerer prophet. It's not because he's so amazingly skilled in magic and so much more powerful than anyone else. Hell, the Cish almost overwhelm his power magically and he defeats them because he's physically gifted too, not magically stronger.

Curethan, your clarification didn't clarify. I don't see what you mean at all. So is the Outside governed by human will? Is human damnation governed by the outside, which is mutable? Is there some kind of feedback loop and both are mutable?

[nerd123]

Standard war strategy would be very different indeed if ordinary sorcerers were able to create a whirlwind of debris around them, nullifying every chorae archer in the army. Kellhus's show of magic in the end signifies a major moment in the history of the Three Seas.

They can. Akka does this several times.

But it has nothing to do with using more power. It has to do with wasting less and being more specific.

Well, I don’t think it directly says anywhere that Kellhuss can, say, make bigger fireballs than anyone else, but transportation is obviously a super awesome new power and I had the impression that no one else could create a tornado of protection around themselves like Kellhuss can. Achamian has on occasion used sorcery to shield himself to one degree or another from chorea, but I can’t think of anywhere in the book where he shields himself with an impenetrable tornado.

Also, doesn’t Cleric exhibit a degree of destructive power that's unlike anything we’ve seen before? Are you saying that Cleric is more powerful than Kellhuss, since Kellhuss isn’t really “more powerful” than any other sorcerers?

[Rhadamanth]

I thought he won by teleporting right behind them and beheading them one-by-one, hence also magically stronger. It states how they all sit there dumstruck when disappears for the first time.

He killed some of them in that way. The first he overpowered magically, two he killed by teleporting, one by throwing a chorae bolt and the last by magic again. The battle does bring up an interesting point. Is this close to the limits of Kellhus' power or does he become much stronger? Did he just not have time to devise enough new Cants before facing the Cishaurim? I think it's the latter. Funny how Incariol fights somewhat similarly, using a combination of martial and arcane skills.

[aimlessgun]

But it has nothing to do with using more power. It has to do with wasting less and being more specific. You still don't understand that and never have. Gnostic sorcery vs anagnosis is the difference between using a bazooka to start a fire by blowing up some wood, then crafting some weapons using that fire, vs using a bazooka as a weapon. Both start with the same power source and have the same amount of power behind them; one directs that power in a more precise way.

What exactly do you mean by 'power source'? Is that in the text? I wasn't aware a power source of some sort was referenced at all, even though there is the implication that gnostic sorcery is more efficient.

In any case, I agree, there is zero evidence for Kellhus using the second inutteral to do anything involving more raw power. His new spells can all be understood through the lens of higher precision or being able to express ideas that other sorcerers are unable to articulate.

[Rhadamanth]

We really should have a group reread of the series before WLW comes out. It'd probably take at least a couple of months for us to argue through all the little points we find so the time would pass quickly.

[lokisnow]

You are mostly correct. The first skin spy attacks and Moe defeats it with blue flashing hands. The second skin spy attacks and Moe grabs it and its head burns as blue light consumes its head and makes a candle of its body.

I'd forgotten this. wouldn't this be textual proof that Moe is not as weak in the psyche as Kell claims he is? Or do we all just believe Kell's explanation that Moe is weak because Kell has ensorceled the readers as well and become a voice of authority in transmitting explanations of this bizarre Earwa verse.

[Happy Ent]

I'd forgotten this. wouldn't this be textual proof that Moe is not as weak in the psyche as Kell claims he is?

Nah. Moe can make people explode, no problem. I’m sure even Cishaurium Tertiaries can do that. The destruction at Mengedda was caused by such:

“It was the Scourge they used, then?”

Iyokus nodded. “I would say so. And perhaps the Lash, as well.”

“So they were Secondaries or Tertiaries?”

“Without question,” the Master of Spies replied, “perhaps under one or two Primaries... [...]

Moe’s problem is that he fails to be the most powerful Primary. He ought to. Since he isn’t, he cannot be blessed, because Cishaurim power is based on piety. That’s proof (to the Cishaurim) that something is wrong with him. He can never be boss.

[Calibandar]

So, quick question. Just reading the appendix to TJE and it says about the Mandate that all Mandati dreams Seswatha's dreams. Can we take from that that Kellhus probably does as well? I know there seems to be no sign of this in TJE to confirm or deny this, just wondering. It seems like it would be very useful for him to get them.

Secondly, about the Inchoroi:

It says here in the "What came before" section of TJE that "That the Ark, vast and golden, toppled from the Void... and from it crawled the dread ands monstrous Inchoroi, a race who had come to seal The World against the Heavens, and thus save the obscenities that they called their souls."

This is a fairly blunt statement on Bakker's part about the Inchoroi motives. Just makes me wonder, this sounds like they already came here with that motive in mind, to cause annihilation so there would be no more eternal damnation and "seal the World".

[Nerdanel]

So, quick question. Just reading the appendix to TJE and it says about the Mandate that all Mandati dreams Seswatha's dreams. Can we take from that that Kellhus probably does as well? I know there seems to be no sign of this in TJE to confirm or deny this, just wondering. It seems like it would be very useful for him to get them.

It is said somewhere that the dreams come from a ritual where one touches Seswatha's petrified heart. Kellhus didn't do that, and it's very unlikely he would have done so later on.

Secondly, about the Inchoroi:

It says here in the "What came before" section of TJE that "That the Ark, vast and golden, toppled from the Void... and from it crawled the dread ands monstrous Inchoroi, a race who had come to seal The World against the Heavens, and thus save the obscenities that they called their souls."

This is a fairly blunt statement on Bakker's part about the Inchoroi motives. Just makes me wonder, this sounds like they already came here with that motive in mind, to cause annihilation so there would be no more eternal damnation and "seal the World".

Interesting. I've always skipped the summaries, even though I've suspected they might have worthwhile information in them. The above implies that the Inchoroi knew about souls and damnation before they came to Eärwa. So, it could be that our alien rape demons are indeed true demons of some sort who found a way to cross from the Outside to Eärwa in a spaceship... It's interesting though that the apparently science-based[*] Inchoroi didn't know about magic, while the summoned demons we have seen combined magic and brute physical force.

It sounds like Eärwa is the center of the universe and the outer space consists of various heavens and hells. How very pre-modern.

[*] But that writing all over the walls of Incû-Holoinas is highly suspicious...