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Judging Eye X (Re-read)


Happy Ent

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I find myself at the horns of a dilemma. I have the White Luck Warrior, and I am pressed quite urgently to dig into it and join the WLW discussion which is exploding.

Yet on the other hand I also really want to re-read the first 4 books. All of them, not just TJE. But that will take me weeks.

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I’d do the re-read if I were you.

It’s going to be a few more days anyway before my copy arrives, and I assume nobody starts reading WLW before I can, out of solidarity.

I’ll but a message up as soon as my copy arrives, and then we can all start. It’s going to be great.

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I’d do the re-read if I were you.

It’s going to be a few more days anyway before my copy arrives, and I assume nobody starts reading WLW before I can, out of solidarity.

I’ll but a message up as soon as my copy arrives, and then we can all start. It’s going to be great.

:rofl:

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I find myself at the horns of a dilemma. I have the White Luck Warrior, and I am pressed quite urgently to dig into it and join the WLW discussion which is exploding.

Yet on the other hand I also really want to re-read the first 4 books. All of them, not just TJE. But that will take me weeks.

it's more likely you're going to want to do a reread after reading WLW.

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It’s here.

And I have a conference deadline tomorrow. Tonight, actually.

Hm… research career versus Bakker? Failing as an academic by reading a failed academic?

He starts with “Wars, as a rule, fall within the compass of history…”. I start with “Let $R$ be a subset of $T$…” It’s an all-nighter either way.

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to get through things quickly:

Mimara looks at the chorae and it is a nasty piece of work. It is abyssal, anathema, the bane of her heart's sole desire. I think the bane of her heart part refers to her desire to learn sorcery, but I would not be surprised to see a double meaning there, that her heart itself is rebelling at the chorae and what it does.

note this and compare it to what Kelmomas does before the statue of AjokliSo with that line I think we're supposed to complete the comparison, and that like the bug sacrificed to Ajokli, this chorae is in a sense sacrificed to the God, and it's this bit of business that binds Mimara to the diety.

I think Mimara has something of a conflict with the Chorae, they have perhaps a battle here. The chorae is fighting her as she opens the judging eye and focuses on it. She hears voices, thinks of spiders skittering, thinks of the chorae mortifying her flesh in purification like whips and nails might. This was one source of my comment suggesting that chorae are inherently purifying, that they cleanse the mark away. The counter to this is the above mention that the chorae itself has a foul and wretched mark indicating it's sorcerous construct. But it is still significant that Bakker directly describes the chorae as potentially purifying and directly compares it to nails (which have a particularly christian connotation) and the whips of scourging (which has a more catholic connotation, and is not quite so limited to invoking only a christian mythos for the reader). If I were inclined to find proofs of my theories anywhere and everywhere I would obsess on this passage and try to transmute it into proof that Mimara is the true latter-latter prophet, the heir to Sejenus. But I am not so inclined.

So when Mimara begins to focus on it, then the suffering and pain begin. This, again can be interpreted several ways, the obvious interrpretation is that the judging eye is sensing the morality of the topos slave chamber they are currently in. Another explanation might suggest Mimara's judging eye is seeing the history of that particular chorae. I'm quite inclined to this interpretation because of the soon to follow sentance, "the clubs begin falling, and her body rebels down to its rooted bowel, gagging at memories of salt. Emptiness itself..." With obviously, the memories of salt phrase leading me to this conclusion that Mimara is getting a very literal 'read' on this particular chorae. Yet another option suggests that she is merely reacting to the morality of the chorae itself, and that in the judging eye it is so horrific it induces all these reactions. But this does not make sense when considering it a tear of God as Mimara soon will always think of it. Yet another options suggests the Chorae is somehow fighting back against what Mimara is about to do it, that the only think that can harm the chorae is the threat of the judging eye which will transfigure the abomination into a tear of god. In this interpretation, one could think of a chorae as something akin to a horcrux. The existence of the animata in the TWLW preview is suggestive of this, that perhaps Chorae have something of a sentience that they are powered by a tormented soul, and this is part of why they are just so horrifically marked. Note that Mimara feels attacked, and it is described in similar terms to anagogic sorcery, using analogy, "throwing hooks about her, a million lacerating stings." which is in keeping withe the style of anagogic magic, I think.

When Mimara passes through the chorae, she gets beyond the contradiction of the chorae itself, "the sanctity and the sin" that she perceives it to be. And after she does this, the chorae is transformed. It begins as a point of light within the nastyness of the chorae. she perhaps experiences the warm and sleepy presence of the God (perhaps she awakens him too?) And the light then grows until it completely consumes the contradicting blackness, Bakker describes that blackness as the false foil. Foil is an interesting literary term to throw in here. A tool of analysis and of authors a foil is a construct used to convey a greater meaning via compariso, or more appropriately in this instance, of contradiction. But the light of certainty burns the contradiction itself to nothing but dust, and at this point Mimara holds no longer a chorae but a tear of God. A transfigured piece for her eyes. she even next thinks, "or to what used to be a chorae."

She then looks to Kosotor and senses his Chorae as 'an outward shining instead of a pinprick of inhaling black.' This is the passage that leads me to believe that if Chorae are meant to act as gates/portals/threshholds rather than just anchors, then Kosotors and Mimara's are two very different breeds of chorae. If Mimara draws one in, then Kosotor's pushes one out. They are perhaps a pair, and perhaps together they will represent very powerful possibilities for Mimara.

and then of course Ginyursis shows up. Ginyursis, probably of a younger generation than Cujo. Notes Cleric as his cousin, probably NilGiccas I think. In any event, Ginyursis seems to have found them despite all his doors and gates having been changed on him. Mimara even perceives him as a gate and as a threshold, and he later rises to protect the gate of the medial screw when he brings up the hellish seal he seems to be part of. I wonder at times if he was condemned and deliberately damned to be part of that gate, or if it's an accident of fate. But I lean towards the side that it was deliberately done, perhaps as a way for him to remember, to volunteer to become a monstrous animata, an afterlife of such pain and intense misery that perhaps it would wipe out some of the memory of the life itself.

They have an interesting conversation and it could be interpreted as the obvious, about the Emwamma, in whose slave chamber they are.

I am VERY resistant to this interpretation. It's too human. It's too human to think that the nonmen would be talking about US, about ourselves, about humankind. It is exactly what we are expected to think, it is exactly the sort of thought trap that Bakker relishes. I think these two are talking about the Inchoroi.

So in that interpretation we have:

"The inchoroi called us false."

"They are children who can never grow, they could be no different." If the INchoroi are immortal they will never grow, mortality forces growth on a person. And the Inchoroi's lusts could be considered childish from the perspective of the Cunuroi who examine such noble and high pursuits of philosophy, theology, the arts etc. While the inchoroi examine the bodily pursuits. Setting these up in a binary comparison is classic religion 101. Hedonism bad, asceticism good. but I'm very resistent to believing that we'll continue to think of the Inchoroi as pure evil, I think we will be asked to reconsider why we consider the purely mental so edifying while trying to downgrade the purely physical. Certainly the inchoroi are evil in their single minded pursuit of pleasure, but perhaps we will discover the Cunuroi are every bit as evil in their single minded pursuits (also same for the Dunyain).

In fact, if you continue to read the exchange, you could postulate that the Cunuroi (heh, roi, kings, lol). were punished with the inchoroi, perhaps they even summoned or created the inchoroi so they could experience the pleasure principle, examine and study it. That they're the makers of their own downfall seems inevitable.

Note that Ginyursis says:

"I loved [the inchoroi]. I loved them so much." I do not think that makes any sense if talking about the Emwamma. the ancient parts of my mind are going bonkers saying, of course they would love us, we're so loveable. But the inchoroi may have brought the Cunuroi love for the very first time. They may have never experienced it before. It's also one of the things Kellhus seems to lack, but that's a thread I'm not equipped to pursue at the moment.

Then:

They betrayed

Damnation cousin, how could we forget?

I wonder if the cunuroi came to earwa and in a sense forgot all about damnation. the Inchoroi brought them a reminder. But this is all so loaded it is impossible to analyze. Forgetting has so much significance when associated with cunuroi. It just completely opens up a colossal can of interpretive worms.

And Cleric closes with a very enigmatic phrase, "Not I. I have never forgotten." No we have an interrpretive-can-of-worms^2 and I say fuck it, I'm going to go read WLW.

Some of you have a lot more time and talent to just think than I do.

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  • 3 years later...

Just getting to Cil-Aujas in my reread. If Sarl isn't a skin-spy, then it's the biggest red herring EVER. Almost every mention of Sarl points out how wrinkled/lined/creased his face is, very similar to Sarcellus' face after he gets burned in TWP.

Hmm. Kind of weird to look back at thsoe thread and find out what theories were popular in those days.

I recall scenes in TJE where he is passing through sorcerous wards and such, easily spotting them.

Didn't he also mentioned learning the Cants of Calling? (or some other lesser cant.)

Mim's POV is always in present tense, for no reason I have yet been able to discern.

Another thing I did not notice (and don't understand.)

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