White Luck Warrior VII

[Borric]

It just seems athromorphicly natural for there to be actual gods.

And yet we see very little of the gods in the first three books.

While the Consult remained hidden.

My take on Kell’s goal,

I believe he’s after immortality, and what he needs he has to control.

He will therefore need to control the Consult, and go through the procedure used to make the nomen immortal.

[lokisnow]

Must...resist...urge to engage dissonance of 'objectively'!

simplest explanation is what we're told by the what has come before: Kellhus went mad.

[Callan S.]

This quote. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Borric,

With the early books, I assumed a world with no gods at all. Just magic. But then in judging eye fake priestesses of yatwer being swollowed out of reality...well! If the consult can do that, why haven't they won already? I guess the stork could be fake, but it just doesn't seem the style.

[Grack21]

They're all on the holodeck on the enterprise. The consult is just Barclay trying to get them out!

[Curethan]

I think the premise is that its an alternative world like the ancient peoples of our world thought they lived in. With rape aliens thrown in on top of that.

[Borric]

Borric, With the early books, I assumed a world with no gods at all. Just magic. But then in judging eye fake priestesses of yatwer being swollowed out of reality...well! If the consult can do that, why haven't they won already? I guess the stork could be fake, but it just doesn't seem the style.

We have no idea of the Consults capabilities really, nor of the gods come to that.

But to me, Gods are omnipotent, there are rules that a good fantasy world needs to follow.

Be true to those rules and the world is believable, stray from them and its undermined.

To me, Gods have no rules, they can achieve anything, making it a bit of a farce to have them as opposition?. I guess that’s at the back of my mind when i read theses books. And why i dismissed the Gods as anything other than figureheads.

The cults/sects seem a good place for the Consult to attack from, to me.

Kell has things wrapped up pretty tight with his new religion and legions of fanatics.

Where else could they attack from?, a direct attack is out of the question. Assassination is indeed the way to go. And what better pool of potentials than people already committed to a cause.

(Or have lost there Father and seen there people enslaved, as in Sorwels case.)

They just need to corrupt the cult and manipulate the members.

Is that within the Consults capabilities?. I have no idea to be honest.

But that encounter with Kell in TTT was very suggestive of there abilities to make people believe what they will. At one point Kell was within the Consult agents control.

If they can do that to a Dunyain, there abilities are indeed impressive.

[aimlessgun]

But to me, Gods are omnipotent, there are rules that a good fantasy world needs to follow.

As Curethan said, Bakker is trying to write a world that is literally as the ancients saw it. Their gods (Ares, Athena etc) were not omnipotent, and thus the gods of Earwa are not omnipotent. The God, whatever he may be, could be omnipotent.

[Borric]

fair enough.

maybe they really are Deamons as Meppa says.

[Callan S.]

To me, Gods have no rules, they can achieve anything, making it a bit of a farce to have them as opposition?

Except there seem to be many of them and if they can do anything, why haven't they beaten each other? They are supposed to be warring, after all.

Perhaps think that if a god can do anything, then it could make extensions of itself. Think of Yatwer, for example, as more like a finger. An extension.

But I'll grant I hadn't thought of the whole mouth in the dirt thing as a consult construct. What's interesting to me is that I didn't - I just believed it would be related to yatwer.

[Grack21]

I think the premise is that its an alternative world like the ancient peoples of our world thought they lived in. With rape aliens thrown in on top of that.

Right, its the crusades through the eyes of H. R. Giger. :P

[Curethan]

Kinuric inrithism seem more like the pre-jesus romans. Monotheism was the dominant ideology on both sides of the crusades iirc.

TSA's esoterics are modeled on classical philosophy and theologies from eastern and western belief systems.

From the glossary, I felt that the hundred were modeled on homeric tradition - constantly infighting using humans as their playthings and tipping the scales of fortune.

Its interesting to consider that they are simply a ruse of the consult.

I'll be pissed if you spoiled a twist like that, Borric. ;)

[Kalbear]

If the Hundred are Consult the series will be pretty shitty. It's the kind of twist that I'd expect from a soap opera.

It weakens the scariness of the Consult. It completely undermines their belief system as well - why would they ever fear damnation if all the gods are on their side? It weakens their values too - how do you reconcile something like Gilgaol with 'we are a race of lovers'?

It's clear that the Hundred have existed quite a bit longer than Inrithism in one form or another. The Nonmen reference them several times in their tales and chose to not worship them directly. If they were Consult, that would mean that the Nonmen know that they're Consult and that they didn't exist before the Consult arrived - which just doesn't work as far as the timeline and what we know of Nonmen culture. Nonmen's religion and belief didn't change significantly after the Consult arrived, after all.

So yeah, I think it's silly. The correlation between Yatwer coming out and the Consult being revealed is rubbish; the reason that there's a correlation there ignores the actual CAUSE, which is that Kellhus reveals the Consult.

[Borric]

You misunderstand me Kalbear,

I only mean the Consult have corrupted or infiltrated the sects since the end of the holy war.

Since the 100 became pro active?.

[The Imp's Advocate]

Yeah, Borric's theory was that the Hundred don't actually exist, but the Consult had taken control of the cults and keep control with "miracles" every so often.

He has since revised that theory, because the White-Luck-Warrior seems to be beyond anyone's capabilities but the actual gods.

Also, Borric, the Hundred are not omnipotent, or omniscient. They are blind to the No-God, and we don't know what else.

I have a similar theory, that the Judging Eye comes not from God, but from the Consult or the Hundred, coloring Mimara's perceptions to make her a slave to someone's goals. It has yet to be proven wrong, but I recognize that it makes sense for the Judging Eye to be real, as it is a very direct way to explore the consequences of "objective morality", which seems to be a subject Bakker wants to deal with.

[Kalbear]

I only mean the Consult have corrupted or infiltrated the sects since the end of the holy war.

Since the 100 became pro active?.

Don't buy that either. We're seeing miracles unlike anything that the Consult has shown ability to do. If they've infiltrated the cults they've done so for thousands of years since we have so many documentations of the gods becoming active - including the White Luck Warrior. It just doesn't make sense.

On the Judging Eye: an important point to consider is that both Mimara and WLW see things in 'real' time. They're not reminiscing like Akka does; everything in their chapters is present-tense. This goes with the idea that to the Gods all time is the same time and everything is locked in and determined (stated by one of the philosophers early on) and a reason why they're blind to the No-God (because he exists outside the causal loop of watcher and watched). The Consult PoVs don't have this characteristic, so I doubt it seriously.

[The Imp's Advocate]

Yeah, if it's fake its almost certainly one or more of The Hundred who are manipulating Mimara. I just threw in the Consult for the sake of completeness. Equally likely could be Kellhus whelming her or some other form of long-term Dunyain hypnosis shit.

[Curethan]

This goes with the idea that to the Gods all time is the same time and everything is locked in and determined (stated by one of the philosophers early on)

What? Missed that one. Anyone know the quote?

[lokisnow]

these seem relevant:

If all human events possess purpose, then all human deeds possess purpose. And yet when men vie with men, the purpose of no man comes to fruition: the result always falls somewhere in between. The purpose of deeds, then, cannot derive from the purposes of men, because all men vie with all men. This means the deeds of men must be willed by something other than men. From this it follows that we are all slaves.

Who then is our Master?

—MEMGOWA, THE BOOK OF DIVINE ACTS

The Poet will yield up his stylus only when the Geometer can explain how Life can at once be a point and a line. How can all time, all creation, come to the now? Make no mistake: this moment, the instant of this very breath, is the frail thread from which all creation hangs.

That men dare to be thoughtless…

—TERES ANSANSIUS, THE CITY OF MEN

The vulgar think the God by analogy to man and so worship Him in the form of the Gods. The learned think the God by analogy to principles and so worship Him in the form of Love or Truth. But the wise think the God not at all. They know that thought, which is finite, can only do violence to the God, who is infinite.

It is enough, they say, that the God thinks them.

—MEMGOWA, THE BOOK OF DIVINE ACTS

Souls can no more see the origins of their thought than they can see the backs of their heads or the insides of their entrails. And since souls cannot differentiate what they cannot see, there is a peculiar sense in which the soul cannot self-differentiate. So it is always, in a peculiar sense, the same time when they think, the same place where they think, and the same individual who does the thinking. Like tipping a spiral on its side until only a circle can be seen, the passage of moments always remains now, the carnival of spaces always sojourns here, and the succession of people always becomes me. The truth is, if the soul could apprehend itself the way it apprehended the world—if it could apprehend its origins—it would see that there is no now, there is no here, and there is no me. In other words, it would realize that just as there is no circle, there is no soul.

—MEMGOWA, CELESTIAL APHORISMS

But who are you, man, to answer God thus? Will what is made say to him who made it—Why have you made me this way? Does the potter not have power over his clay, to make, from the same mass, one vessel for honour, and another for dishonour?

—ROMANS 9:20-21

Where luck is the twist of events relative to mortal hope, White-Luck is the twist of events relative to divine desire. To worship it is to simply will what happens as it happens.

—ARS SIBBUL, SIX ONTONOMIES

If the immutable appears recast, then you yourself have been transformed.

—MEMGOWA, CELESTIAL APHORISMS

Gods are epochal beings, not quite alive. Since the Now eludes them, they are forever divided. Sometimes nothing blinds souls more profoundly than the apprehension of the Whole. Men need recall this when they pray.

—AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN

[Kalbear]

What? Missed that one. Anyone know the quote?

Lockesnow posted a couple of the points, but it was brought up when talking about the White Luck Warrior as well. We've talked about it in the past and why it's an AHA moment that Mimara's chapters are all in the present tense compared to all the other characters; there's a reason for it, and that reason is that she's locked into her path because she has the Judging Eye.

[Curethan]

Its hardly cut and dried. I see nothing convincing in those quotes or the arguments put forth earlier. You shouldn't present your opinions and assumptions as facts, imo.