Bakker XIV: Star Trek into Darkness that Comes Before

[Larry of the Lawn]

WLW doesn't follow the shortest Path. Whatever the goal is - assassinating Maithanet, killing Esmi and/or Kellhus, etc, has already occurred in his view, so the "path" that he follows is the one already laid out to perfection. He mentions numerous times actually seeing multiples of himself before and behind himself, so he literally has only to follow in his own footsteps.

Edit - I think the WLW will fail because I believe Kellhus is actually divine (as I mentioned I am 95% convinced that his heart-pulling and fire-scrying, which involved no Cants and have no explanation, are Kellhus's own divine power similar to the Psukhe.)

This always confused me too, wasn't it Serwe's heart that he pulled out? Pretty sure he ripped out a guy's windpipe earlier in TWP, so maybe with the body rotting for a couple of days he was somehow able to quickly rip out her heart without anyone noticing?

[Francis Buck]

He doesn't tell us the gods aren't real, except through the mouth of Moenghus. Everything else is more letting us believe as Kellhus does originally, that it's all explainable through some other means.

We see plenty of people praying, worshipping and doing their thing in the first trilogy. We just generally see less overt responses to it then we do in the second trilogy. But the faith and worship is there.

It's definitely focused on less though and we don't see much of the peasantry so we don't see any Yatwer.

Right, I know what you're saying. I just meant that, he gives us the impression that all the religious stuff we're seeing is just...well, religious stuff. There's never any hint that these gods are real and have tangible power until TTT. And then we have Kellhus' super-logical close-world theory perspective, which kinda colors our (or my, in any case) view of things from the beginning.

[Shryke]

Right, I know what you're saying. I just meant that, he gives us the impression that all the religious stuff we're seeing is just...well, religious stuff. There's never any hint that these gods are real and have tangible power until TTT. And then we have Kellhus' super-logical close-world theory perspective, which kinda colors our (or my, in any case) view of things from the beginning.

Which seems to be the intent. Someone earlier described the prologue with Kellhus running into that Nonman Sorceror as a microcosm of this and I think it's placement at the end of the prologue is deliberately to make that statement.

Kellhus and his Logos and his view of the world as logical and structured is wrong it seems.

[Sci-2]

This always confused me too, wasn't it Serwe's heart that he pulled out? Pretty sure he ripped out a guy's windpipe earlier in TWP, so maybe with the body rotting for a couple of days he was somehow able to quickly rip out her heart without anyone noticing?

We don't know. There's no explicit debate but even in that scene, IIRC, Bakker switches between describing it as Serwe's heart and Kellhus's heart.

(It's a great passage..."WE ARE THAT ANGER!")

Of course, people could presumably go back and check if Serwe's heart was in her chest, but the thing is people actually thought they saw this happen.

Thinking back to the eyeball on the heart in TJE, I wonder if the heart is the anchor of the soul in Earwa?

[Castel]

We don't know. There's no explicit debate but even in that scene, IIRC, Bakker switches between describing it as Serwe's heart and Kellhus's heart.

(It's a great passage..."WE ARE THAT ANGER!")

Of course, people could presumably go back and check if Serwe's heart was in her chest, but the thing is people actually thought they saw this happen.

Thinking back to the eyeball on the heart in TJE, I wonder if the heart is the anchor of the soul in Earwa?

Yes, but I thought that the previous discussion of Earwan metaphysics explains this? I can't remember the exact phrasing but it seems that the Ouside shines through people, Kellhus just reached through his hole, into Serwe's and pulled out her heart or something like that?

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

Sci - although Proyas does describe the brazier as the "Seeing-Flame" there's nothing explicit to say it's the product of Kellhus's power or an enchanted object. The hearth is described simply as small, iron, and octagonal. It is also interesting that Proyas thinks that he can see or sense scenes of doom in the shifting patterns of smoke and light on the tent walls in those scenes.

LUI - I am convinced that it is her heart, but that even that is proof of his divinity. Here is the passage, and remember this is from AK's own POV and that this is before he learned the Gnosis:

Crying out to one another in eager terror, the Nascenti cut the Warrior-Prophet from his dead wife. A hush, it seemed, had settled across the whole of Caraskand.

He knew he should be weak unto death, but something inexplicable moved him. He rolled from Serwë, braced his arms against his knees, then waving his frantic disciples away, stood impossibly erect. Hands wrapped him in a shroud of white linen. He stumbled clear of Umiaki's gloom, lifted his face to sun and sky.

[....]

And it seemed there was nothing, no dwarfing frame, that could restrict him to this place, to any place... He was all things, and all things were his.

Tears roared down his cheeks. With a haloed hand, he reached beneath his breast, firmly wrested the heart from his ribs.

[....]

He looked into their wasted faces, answered their fevered eyes. He brandished Serwe's burning heart.

Note that he is some distance from Serwë. Also note that the magic of the flame involves the concept of space - the same as Kellhus told Akka (that all men are in the same metaphysical place and see from a particular vantage whereas the God sees from all). So the implication is that Kellhus reaches through the Outside and grabs Serwe's heart.

I'm not really sure how it all ties together, but I think Kellhus has a particular divine power that involves being able to move from one "place" to another or see from one to the next as through the fire.

[Happy Ent]

I think it’s perfectly in harmony with the metaphysics.

Souls are pinpricks to the Outside. Concepts of location are ill defined in the Outside. At the moment Kellhus’s resurrection, His and Serwë’s souls are as close as any in the history of the universe. It’s the single holiest event in Eärwan history, just like the crucification of Christ in Western metaphysics. The most extreme interpretation of what the metaphysics might allow, in the extreme, happens then, at that very moment, and never before or after.

Hearts are the soul’s focus. (See eye-in-heard in Judging eye.) Souls are all connected in the Outside. Kellhus just levelled up to God-mode. Serwë is the single soul most connected to him. He reaches into his chest, touches his heart, which is identical to Serwë’s heart-soul and rips out the physical manifestation of Serwë’s heart of his own chest.

(No Cants are involved.)

As religious imagery goes, this is par for the course. It’s not as if all graves in Caraskand opened and the dead walked about for a whole night.

[Calibandar]

Great discussion. I want Unholy Consult now.

[jurble]

I always enjoyed Eli's reaction to that event - he becomes utterly convinced that Kellhus is a prophet, and that he is truly damned. It makes me sad that Aurang didn't take advantage of that and try to convince Eli that he could, in fact, save his soul. I guess the Consult totally ignores the Anagogic schools, which is a shame. You'd think that they'd have tried to turn the Vokalati and whatever School is in Zeum onto their ideology (and raise Zeum against Kellhus in doing so), and perhaps give them the Gnosis in an attempt to keep Kellhus occupied longer with the Unification Wars. They dropped the ball there as far as I can tell.

Of course, by that point Kellhus was openly preaching that the Consult were real and trying to kill humanity. So by revealing themselves to the Zeumi and Nilnameshi schools, they might've reinforced Kellhus' claims. Revealing themselves to the non-Few would definitely have done so, but only to the Schools, dunno, might've been a gamble. I guess they wanted to play safe.

[Happy Ent]

12AN, you raise an interesting point.

If I understand your proposed plan correctly, the Consult approaches an anagogic school and shows them the Inverse Fire. The school understands that they are damned, and the Consult offers them 2 great things: the Gnosis and the possibility of un-damnation. How could the school resist?

Objection 1: Geography. The School is in the Three Seas. The Inverse Fire is in Golgotterath. How does the Consult transport the School to the Inverse Fire (and back, if it’s really to annoy Kellhus). Teleportation is not available to anybody. Aurang can’t fly people back and forth. (Or can he?) Could Aurang use some kind of Cant to communicate the vision of the Inverse Fire. (If so, why did not Mek used that Cant thousands of years ago? Whatever the Inverse Fire is, it seems to be important to actually be in the right room to be convinced.)

Objection 2. The Gnosis and undamnation is exactly what Kellhus promises, too.

Objection 3: By revealing themselves to the anagogic schools (before the Kellian empire), the Consult would have proved the Mandate right. They preferred a ridiculed and relatively powerless Mandate to the allegiance of a lesser school.

Objection 4: Arrogance. They have a whole city of Quya. No recently-converted Human upstarts are necessary.

I find neither of these objections particularly convincing. Please speculate more.

[Madness]

+1 Mith.

May the stain of sacrilege remain mine own blasphemy but... HE/Others, you might enjoy this: Why haven't more Few gone to the Consult?.

[Sci-2]

+1 Mith.

May the stain of sacrilege remain mine own blasphemy but... HE/Others, you might enjoy this: Why haven't more Few gone to the Consult?.

Heheheh, I was about to say it's annoying that people post about that when someone else makes it a topic. ;-P

[Paxter]

Interesting discussion about Serwe/Kellhus' heart, I had always assumed it was Dunyain sleight of hand, but now I'm not so sure.

I guess the major counterpoint to the idea of Kellhus' divinity (at least to my mind) is the seemingly (though debatably) ominscient narrrator in the synopsis informing us of AK's madness.

[karaddin]

I go back and forth on how I feel about some of HE's theories, but this one I think is the most solid. The way it's written it's clear SOMETHING is going on in that scene and it feels more than sleight of hand. If we hadn't had the fire seeing in WLW then I wouldn't buy this theory so much, but there really does seem to be something to Kellhus being able to reach through the outside and back into the inside as his special non magic ability. I'm still not positive he is going to end up carrying through and saving the world, but I'm sold that he is a genuine prophet and I think HE's reasoning on this has been pretty solid over the last thread or so.

Larry - If you are reading this thread, are you the breaker of imps and larry's? Because that's what keeps popping into my head from your new name.

[Guest]

And if something beyond Dunyain sleight of hand was going on at the Circumfixion, then what does it mean that the No-God seemed to speak to Kellhus?

And did Moe not seem to speak to him as well? Was that Kellhus going insane, or was that literally happening? If it's the latter, was Moe using some variation of dream-sending (i.e., "Send to me my son")?

[karaddin]

I think Kell did go insane there, but that the No-God did actually speak to him as well. I can't remember my justification for this though >_<

Certainly in the sense of madness that Cnaiur uses (I think? Or is it Akka?) of the Outside leaking in, and probably our real world definition too. Perhaps he's a divine prophet, but of the No-God! That fits multiple theories :P

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

It's also notable that Kellhus sees the haloes on his own hands. Given other textual evidence linking this to belief, I think Kellhus pretty clearly believes himself to be a genuine prophet, whether or not it's true.

There's no way, looking at the scene, that he somehow palmed Serwe's heart. His hands were cut from the ring and he was immediately helped up, giving no opportunity to grab it - and the text is very clear that he reaches "under his breast" to grasp the heart. Not to mention that one of the lines I omitted was that he raised his palms to the "hollows of the earth" - so he was empty-handed at the point just before grabbing the heart.

If he isn't reaching through the Outside or something similar, then the text must be wrong about it being Serwe's heart, meaning it's his own.

Either way you spin it IMO you end up with Kellhus manifesting divine powers.

[sologdin]

I think Kell did go insane there, but that the No-God did actually speak to him as well. I can't remember my justification for this though >_<

the thought is authorized by the "what has come before" in volume IV:

What [Moe] did not know, could not know, was that Kellhus would see further than him, that he would think beyond his thousandfold thought...

And go mad.

i have my disagreement with the interpretation of the WHCB narrator, as the insanity is traceable to the grasping of TTT, prior to the seeing-beyond, which i locate in the moe-kell cagemath in III.

we might therefore link the passion of the kellhus on the circle to the insanity of merely seeing TTT, as the bizarro dream-on-the-circle (II.23) is the darkness that comes before the key moment:

He raised his palms to the great hollows of the earth [huh?], and it seemed he embraced the Three Seas.

I think I see, Father.

Cries of rapture and disbelief rang across the packed reaches of the Kalaul. Several paces away Cnaiur stood dumbstruck, as did Eleazaras a length behind him. Incheiri Gotian staggered forward, fell to his knees and wept. Kellhus smiled with boundless compassion. Everywhere he looked, he saw men kneeling...

Yes...The Thousandfold Thought.

(II.25). the chapter begins, not incidentally, with the epigraph: "What is the meaning of a deluded life?" the emergence from the circle marks the onset or culmination of delusion?

[Tears of Lys]

I think Bakker's playing with our notions of sanity and insanity. Cnaiur's insane, Sarl is insane, Kellhus is insane, Kelmomas is nuts (too young to be insane :P)

Who the hell in these books IS sane, anyway? Everyone's in extremis.

If Kellhus is insane because he thinks he's a prophet and so acts like one, AND everyone treats him like one, why does that make him crazy?

As I was reading about Kellhus grasping the Thousandfold Thought, seeing farther than his father, and this apparently leading to some decision on his part, it sorta reminded me of those who witness the Inverse Fire - sort of counterpoints to each other. I haven't thought this through yet. It'll probably come to nothing.

I'm rereading WLW currently and am struck by how Kellhus seems to want to reveal himself to Proyas. Like he's a magician showing the audience how the trick was done. Why would he do that?

[Castel]

If Kellhus is insane because he thinks he's a prophet and so acts like one, AND everyone treats him like one, why does that make him crazy?

Because he's Dunyain and should know better? If he agreed with the Consult on Damnation he really should be trying to kill everyone.

I'm rereading WLW currently and am struck by how Kellhus seems to want to reveal himself to Proyas. Like he's a magician showing the audience how the trick was done. Why would he do that?

Maybe he's just inoculating Proyas against future doubt caused by Akka's return/reveal of Ishual? Of course, when you go down this road we're back to theorizing about what an omniscient Kellhus would do.

He could simply be crazy.