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Bakker XV: Non-Man of Steel


Rhom

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I don't think this will happen in TUC. If the No-God wakes humanity is finished as there are just too many Sranc.

[i guess mankind might be able to hold off for a little while? Enough time to try some clever plan that will disrupt the No-God? Maybe Kellhus needs to capture and interrogate Shae in order to create a new Heron Spear?]

However, this makes me wonder if Kellhus's plan is to fuck up the No-God's resurrection. Perhaps he's calculated he can't stop it, so instead he'll utilize some manner of sorcery to ensure it doesn't have the same control over the weapon races as before.

From a meta-plotting perspective this makes sense though how Kellhus could do this is unclear.

Also, I think if the gods do fight in will be via channeling themselves through mortals.

I don't either so either, I think some big shit will go down in TUC (obviously), but I think there will still be a decent time jump between TAE series and the final book or two (probably another 10 to 20 years).

Agreed on the gods-as-humans thing though.

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That would also fit with Bakker's use of the Iliad for combat scenes.

I thought of the Illiad as well but doesn't Ares physically take the field at some point?

And doesn't Achilles fight a river?

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That would also fit with Bakker's use of the Iliad for combat scenes.

I thought of the Illiad as well but doesn't Ares physically take the field at some point?

And doesn't Achilles fight a river?

Never knew about the Iliad influence. In what ways do you mean that he has used them for combat scenes? Style? The setup of battles?

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On a much lower level than most of our discussion here...

When Conphas is introduced, there is a paragraph that describes him essentially as a self moving soul. It says something to the effect of "Even when he reacted to someone else the way they expected, it was only an act that served him." (The book is at home and can't get the exact quote.) Is this why Conphas has seemingly always been immune to Kellhus? He is so self-confident/self-moving that he can't be effected by the Dunyain manipulations?

simple. In a world that is explicitly meant to recreate as a reality the world 'thought to be true' by the anciencts, why would "The Divine Right of Kings" be false?

Or possibly, Conphas is divine by virtue of being emperor. He may not be a god, quite (maybe he is?), but he's more than a man. Kellhus is deceiving men, not godlings.

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I thought of the Illiad as well but doesn't Ares physically take the field at some point?

And doesn't Achilles fight a river?

Achilles fights Scamander, the river that flows by Troy, but not as a literal river... He's like a Japanese kami, just a local river god.

Never knew about the Iliad influence. In what ways do you mean that he has used them for combat scenes? Style? The setup of battles?

His battles in general resemble the Iliad in that they're this long list of names, on either fight, who kills who, how they're killed, etc. The Iliad is similar, it's just this never-ending long list of names. The Apocalypse itself superficially resembles the Iliad, I guess, in that they use chariots when fighting, but that's just because both the Iliad and the Apocalypse take place during the Bronze Age. Thinking about it, I guess the Bronze Age Collapse and the Apocalypse are sorta similar. The North is destroyed (Mycenaean Greece, Crete, the Hittite Empire) by Sranc (Dorians, Sea Peoples), but the South survives (Egypt). Except, the southerners never end up settling Sranc in Amoteu as a bull-wark... (The Philistines are believed to be descendants of Sea Peoples that the Egyptians resettled into Canaan).

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Francis, I think it's more of a Homeric influence overall but I believe the connotative concept here is that the feats of great heroes, or critical decisions, were often described as possessions by the Gods.

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Achilles fights Scamander, the river that flows by Troy, but not as a literal river... He's like a Japanese kami, just a local river god.

Ah, thanks. Been over a decade.

So I was watching Farscape last night and it was a bit creepy that they fly around in living ships with golden interiors...

Half expected a [gaggle of] giant phalli to pop up on screen.

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Or possibly, Conphas is divine by virtue of being emperor. He may not be a god, quite (maybe he is?), but he's more than a man. Kellhus is deceiving men, not godlings.

Eh, I don't really see it. Is there any scriptural evidence that would lend credence to it? As in, is the Ikurei's claimed divinity that has ever been explained, beyond just being a cultural trait? It seems to me that the Emperor and Conphas are just plain delusional when it comes to their "god-like" shtick. The Xerius is a paranoid, albeit cunning, lunatic (and Kellhus had no problem reading him like a book during the meeting of the Great Names at the end of TDTCB), while Conphas is just a wildly intelligent sociopath. He doesn't experience emotions the way other people do, and he has zero empathy whatsoever. Because he can't relate to normal people at all (and because he's delusionally convinced of his divinity and thus thinks himself inherently superior to everyone else), he becomes somewhat immune to Dunyain techniques. Kellhus uses peoples emotions, often their weaknesses, to control them. Conphas believes he has no weaknesses, and his emotions are non-empathetic.Conphas walks into a room and he knows, for a fact, that is the absolutely smartest person. Even when loses an argument, or fails in the someway (like when Cnaiur made fun of him, with hundreds laughing, at the one meeting in...some fortress they take during the early Holy War), he bounces right back. He doesn't dwell on his errors whatsoever. He discounts most success by other others as blind luck (like with Saubon). None of the things that a Dunyain feeds on to manipulate really exist for Conphas in any significant, non-sociopathically twisted way. That's my two-cents on that topic, anyway.

On balance, I'm certainly willing to believe (after Trisky's post on the other page) that the gods are using people as vessels from time-to-time, however I do think a lot of the in-text cases are open to a ton of interpretation. There are definitely times when people say or think that the gods are speaking to them, or that they are a vessel of a god (or claiming to have seen it in others, like when people saw Gilgaol in Saubon), when in reality it's just stuff they're making up in their head, as many people in the real world do every single day. Even so, I'm also pretty confidant that there are a few cases where these events truly are taking place.

Even though I agree with Sci about the gods likely taking physical through the vessels at men, I could still see them genuinely walking Earwa in their own forms (as the ciphrang do when summoned). Thinking back to the story of when Angeshrael met with the Dark Hunter at the fire, back when gods had not yet let left "men in charge of the world"...even though it's obviously an incredibly old tale, we have to wonder if these things are true. There are gods. They do seem to "possess" men in some form. So, is it true that the gods genuinely walked among men freely in ancient times, until eventually leaving the world for men to be in charge of (while also, a in a way, subtly "ruling" them through religion, behind the scenes)?

His battles in general resemble the Iliad in that they're this long list of names, on either fight, who kills who, how they're killed, etc. The Iliad is similar, it's just this never-ending long list of names. The Apocalypse itself superficially resembles the Iliad, I guess, in that they use chariots when fighting, but that's just because both the Iliad and the Apocalypse take place during the Bronze Age. Thinking about it, I guess the Bronze Age Collapse and the Apocalypse are sorta similar. The North is destroyed (Mycenaean Greece, Crete, the Hittite Empire) by Sranc (Dorians, Sea Peoples), but the South survives (Egypt). Except, the southerners never end up settling Sranc in Amoteu as a bull-wark... (The Philistines are believed to be descendants of Sea Peoples that the Egyptians resettled into Canaan).

I see, thank you. Makes sense now. I've shamefully never read any of the classics (well, I sort of read The Odyssey in high school, but I was a terrible student and didn't pay much attention). Some day I'll get around to it, or at least that's what I keep telling myself.

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Eh, I don't really see it. Is there any scriptural evidence that would lend credence to it? As in, is the Ikurei's claimed divinity that has ever been explained, beyond just being a cultural trait? It seems to me that the Emperor and Conphas are just plain delusional when it comes to their "god-like" shtick. The Xerius is a paranoid, albeit cunning, lunatic (and Kellhus had no problem reading him like a book during the meeting of the Great Names at the end of TDTCB), while Conphas is just a wildly intelligent sociopath. He doesn't experience emotions the way other people do, and he has zero empathy whatsoever. Because he can't relate to normal people at all (and because he's delusionally convinced of his divinity and thus thinks himself inherently superior to everyone else), he becomes somewhat immune to Dunyain techniques. Kellhus uses peoples emotions, often their weaknesses, to control them. Conphas believes he has no weaknesses, and his emotions are non-empathetic.Conphas walks into a room and he knows, for a fact, that is the absolutely smartest person. Even when loses an argument, or fails in the someway (like when Cnaiur made fun of him, with hundreds laughing, at the one meeting in...some fortress they take during the early Holy War), he bounces right back. He doesn't dwell on his errors whatsoever. He discounts most success by other others as blind luck (like with Saubon). None of the things that a Dunyain feeds on to manipulate really exist for Conphas in any significant, non-sociopathically twisted way. That's my two-cents on that topic, anyway.

On balance, I'm certainly willing to believe (after Trisky's post on the other page) that the gods are using people as vessels from time-to-time, however I do think a lot of the in-text cases are open to a ton of interpretation. There are definitely times when people say or think that the gods are speaking to them, or that they are a vessel of a god (or claiming to have seen it in others, like when people saw Gilgaol in Saubon), when in reality it's just stuff they're making up in their head, as many people in the real world do every single day. Even so, I'm also pretty confidant that there are a few cases where these events truly are taking place.

And that is how Bakker doesn't even have to deceive his audience, we gleefully deceive ourselves. He can flat out tell us that A=B because Earwa is deliberately NOT the real world, and his readers will rationalize it to A=C because A=C is how it works in the real world.

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And that is how Bakker doesn't even have to deceive his audience, we gleefully deceive ourselves. He can flat out tell us that A=B because Earwa is deliberately NOT the real world, and his readers will rationalize it to A=C because A=C is how it works in the real world.

Not sure I totally get you there. So you think every example of these events is, in fact, divine interference, every time, and that no one ever occasionally just thinks they're witnessing, possessed, divinely chosen, etc.?

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On the subject of the gods walking the world in things to come, if the gods really are just upjumped Ciphrang then the previously theorised possibility of some meta-gnostic-daimos summoning tearing one of the gods from the Outside and pulling them into the world doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility for me. I imagine they would still be vulnerable to chorae breaking the binding though.

ETA:

Ah, thanks. Been over a decade.

So I was watching Farscape last night and it was a bit creepy that they fly around in living ships with golden interiors...

Half expected a [gaggle of] giant phalli to pop up on screen.

Now you mention it, I've subconsciously always pictured Golgotterath as a giant Moya - the back of her where the starburst is generated can even very easily be described as horns!

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Not sure I totally get you there. So you think every example of these events is, in fact, divine interference, every time, and that no one ever occasionally just thinks they're witnessing, possessed, divinely chosen, etc.?

depends on omnipotence vs omnipresence and immanence vs transcendence (or is that vs emmanence?) and pre-destination vs free will and some other crucial semantical-metaphysics that are not really clear to me (or have not really been revealed).

But I'm inclined to think that if characters attribute a lightning bolt to zeus, then it was probably zeus, rather than the real world explanation of lightning as a natural phenomenon.

So, transitive property and all, if Conphas thinks he is divine, I'm likely to think he might well be correct.

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I'm now running on the theoretical summoning of a god and wondering what that would actually do to them. From what we have seen of the WLW it appears that the gods exist outside of time, however if they were summoned into the Inside that existence would at least be temporarily altered - would summoning a god ultimately kill them? At least as a god, and change them back into a lower level ciphrang?

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depends on omnipotence vs omnipresence and immanence vs transcendence (or is that vs emmanence?) and pre-destination vs free will and some other crucial semantical-metaphysics that are not really clear to me (or have not really been revealed).

Can you elaborate on this further? Not sure I'm following.

If am, then I'm not sure I agree, but I'm not completely opposed to the idea either. Though I still feel that it would be very odd if single every instance of these phenomena are all genuine, if only because it seems absurd that, in the entire world of Earwa, no one has ever mistaken something irrelevant for divine influence/intervention of some kind.

I'm now running on the theoretical summoning of a god and wondering what that would actually do to them. From what we have seen of the WLW it appears that the gods exist outside of time, however if they were summoned into the Inside that existence would at least be temporarily altered - would summoning a god ultimately kill them? At least as a god, and change them back into a lower level ciphrang?

I think this depends on what exactly the gods are. What are they made of? They don't seem to be truly "physical", in the way humans are. Even the ciphrang are in agony when they're summoned into the physical world. Do they possess souls? Are the ciphrang themselves timeless, until pulled into the World?

I'm still quite confidant in my rudimentary belief that, at the highest level, Bakker is drawing from Gnosticism rather significantly. The gods are demiurgic entities, essentially greater, much more powerful ciphrang (or at least some kind of being comparable to them), who have created a physical medium with which to influence and control humanity (along with arbitrary religions as) in order to "feed" off of souls, which are parts of the Monadic God. So, to some extent, the Fanim are correct: there is only one God, but he has been fractured into the souls of humans (and likely all of the other sentient creatures in the universe, which can be inferred from the fact that the Inchoroi have souls), through the medium of the physical reality constructed by the "gods" (or "greater demons"). The Solitary God -- the true god -- is simply the sum of all souls, all consciousness. Earwa is probably the center of the universe, and thus in a sense is some kind pseudo-topos/arcane region. Since the Inchoroi hadn't confronted sorcery before, despite conquering countless worlds, it's possible -- even likely -- that Earwa is the only planet where sorcery is even possible. This may also be why the gods (or greater demons) pay so much attention to Earwa, and could also explain why sorcerers are damned. Perhaps some form of sorcery is the key to destroying the gods, or closing the outside, or perhaps destroying the physical universe completely so that the gods have no method of control, allowing all the souls to rejoin with the Solitary God (and become a Monad). Personally, I just think the Outside will be closed, all sentients will lose free-will as a result of no longer having souls, and magic will in-turn become impossible.

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Question: What are the odds that Kellhus attempted to design a new language for sorcery? What would an ideal sorcerous language even look like? You'd want very high semantic precision i.e. words cover small semantic domains, an extremely large vocabulary to compensate for the small semantic domains, but what would be best for conveying the other grammatical relationships? Heavy inflection or would word order suffice? Inflection can help prevent ambiguity, but designed properly, so could word order.

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I think this depends on what exactly the gods are. What are they made of? They don't seem to be truly "physical", in the way humans are. Even the ciphrang are in agony when they're summoned into the physical world. Do they possess souls? Are the ciphrang themselves timeless, until pulled into the World?

This exact question occurred to me when typing that post, I'm not sure we have anything to go off. When Iyokus is dealing with the Ciphrang before they are summoned they seem to be responding in a more immediate sense than that of the vague god responses though don't they? And it looks forward to consuming Iyokus in the future, as opposed to already enjoying his soul. I think these are a couple of very tiny points in favour of them not experiencing time all at once, but far from conclusive.

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Question: What are the odds that Kellhus attempted to design a new language for sorcery? What would an ideal sorcerous language even look like? You'd want very high semantic precision i.e. words cover small semantic domains, an extremely large vocabulary to compensate for the small semantic domains, but what would be best for conveying the other grammatical relationships? Heavy inflection or would word order suffice? Inflection can help prevent ambiguity, but designed properly, so could word order.

Hmmmm....interesting question.

I'm tempted to say the syntax should be akin to that of LISP, which allows for the precision of a programming language but enough variation to handle a variety of situational Cants.

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Can you elaborate on this further? Not sure I'm following.

Not very well, I'm still wrestling with the ideas as well. there's a lot of the metaphysics I really don't understand and I'm not terribly literate when it comes to philosophy.

It's like Ovid, you see the gods on screen in a lot of stories, and you see stories where the gods are not on screen but the human characters refer to them constantly. we don't take it as a given that in the latter circumstances that the characters are all delusional.

So I try to take a sort of archaic perspective--the gods are there, obviously--as I would when reading the classics.

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Was thinking again about anarcane ground, which as Bakker put it are locations where God dreams most lucidly.

In a lucid dream you are self-aware of your own dreaming state. Now Kellhus went Outside to try and understand the God, so do you think he visited anarcane ground?

And if so could he contact the God from there?

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