Cishaurim

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Cüréthañ

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« Reply #90 on: May 02, 2014, 10:40:48 am »
I tend to think the Cish only need the snakes for mundane activities and aiming the flow of water.  The can see souls and the inherent 'meaning' of some other objects but probably would have a hard time warding arrows and negotiating steps without their snakes.  Wouldn't need them for cants of communication etc.  Just my opinion though.

Came across a thing where someone asked what 'language' a person who was deaf from birth would think in.

I related it to how the Cish frame meaning with the Psukhe lacking a visual component, of course.  Metaphysics of deaf wizards anyone? 
Retracing his bloody footprints, the Wizard limped on.

mrganondorf

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« Reply #91 on: May 05, 2014, 09:19:38 pm »
Nope.  The Cish use them to see.  According to the Moe/Kellhus convo, its like peering through pinholes.
I suspect the fact that snakes don't have sentience/souls, and they belief that they are 'holy' is important.  Otherwise, why remove your eyes and then replace them?

Has the 'witness' theory been postulated?  If the sorcerer can't directly observe what he's doing to the onta, maybe seeing through the eyes of a holy animal is like a loophole in the metaphysical law of Eärwa, whereby the sorcerer can avoid accumulating the Mark.  Essentially using the snakes as a proxy to deflect damnation, or at least the ontologically visible aspect of it.

That's awesome! 

locke

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« Reply #92 on: May 05, 2014, 10:06:10 pm »
I love the idea of a Cishaurim using a wracu as a vessel!  But, are the snakes blind?  I missed that part.  Anyways, Old Moe riding in on Wutteat to save the Great Ordeal might be the highlight of TUC.

Nope.  The Cish use them to see.  According to the Moe/Kellhus convo, its like peering through pinholes.
I suspect the fact that snakes don't have sentience/souls, and they belief that they are 'holy' is important.  Otherwise, why remove your eyes and then replace them?

Riding in on a mad beast whose soul has rotted into a portal to hell would be cool, but I wouldn't count on him saving the Ordeal, haha.
Oh, yeah snakes are not blind.
btw, burst out laughing with that last line.

Nope.  The Cish use them to see.  According to the Moe/Kellhus convo, its like peering through pinholes.
I suspect the fact that snakes don't have sentience/souls, and they belief that they are 'holy' is important.  Otherwise, why remove your eyes and then replace them?

Has the 'witness' theory been postulated?  If the sorcerer can't directly observe what he's doing to the onta, maybe seeing through the eyes of a holy animal is like a loophole in the metaphysical law of Eärwa, whereby the sorcerer can avoid accumulating the Mark.  Essentially using the snakes as a proxy to deflect damnation, or at least the ontologically visible aspect of it.
It has not been stated yet. Very interesting... Where is locke, I'm sure he'll explain it!
Crazy busy at work.  But I LOVE the theory that they are sluffing off damnation on the snakes. :D

mrganondorf

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« Reply #93 on: May 27, 2014, 02:40:31 am »
Sluffing off damnation on snakes...but snakes are holy!  Snakes become unstable!  Put them in a big black box inside a hurricane!

Triskele

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« Reply #94 on: June 15, 2014, 04:04:22 am »
That theory about the snakes is awesome.  But I go back to the chorae thing.  They are still made to disappear by the chorae even if they do not bear the mark.  Perhaps we don't know enough about the Aporos, but however it works, it doesn't seem to hinge on the mark. 

mrganondorf

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« Reply #95 on: July 03, 2014, 05:04:40 am »
That theory about the snakes is awesome.  But I go back to the chorae thing.  They are still made to disappear by the chorae even if they do not bear the mark.  Perhaps we don't know enough about the Aporos, but however it works, it doesn't seem to hinge on the mark. 

I wonder if the choraes have a 'self-consuming' mark?  Isn't it supposed to be a sorcery of paradox?  Also, I wonder if the Cishaurim end up marked in the judging eye--they don't get the ugly, aesthetic disfiguration that mandatis and others get, but they end up damned all the same.  Let's get Meppa in front of Mimara and wait until she starts seeing things.

Simas Polchias

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« Reply #96 on: July 06, 2014, 09:39:19 pm »
That would be funny if Marks are just a technical byproduct of a divine interest, an echoes or a scars of cyphrang/godling/god gaze over soul. Like we have Outside and different agencies there whom, uh-oh, exist out of our time concept. Maybe, it's how they track important, dangerous, favourite people. Or draw silly pictures, lol, with ordinary souls as canvas and marked one as colours (for all we know they can be even texting each other this way -.-).

Yep, with this theory I`m desperately trying to go away from "mark of Cain" context. And I`ll help myself with every Cants of Internets available:

From Middle English mark, merk, merke, from Old English mearc (“mark, sign, line of division; standard; boundary, limit, term, border; defined area, district, province”), from Proto-Germanic *markō (“boundary; boundary marker”), from Proto-Indo-European *marǵ- (“edge, boundary, border”).

Considering the whole issue about Outside pouring into Earwa and birthing topoi, that Proto-Indo-European meaning makes me very happy. On the one hand, sorcerors now sound like a stones in a wall separating reality and Outside. On the other hand, sorcerors are not damned, they just have a nice soul tan from direct exposing to Outside. Though... can a soul tan result in a soul cancer (just remember Wutteat and his pocket hell)?

And yes, that's how I sentence Cishaurim to insignificance. With this theory they are not chosens of a "Solitary God" or something, but just a bunch of powerful sorcerors whose metaphysics, values and behaviour made them tedious in the divine eyes.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2014, 09:50:37 pm by Simas Polchias »

mrganondorf

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« Reply #97 on: July 08, 2014, 08:08:39 pm »
Quote
That would be funny if Marks are just a technical byproduct of a divine interest, an echoes or a scars of cyphrang/godling/god gaze over soul. Like we have Outside and different agencies there whom, uh-oh, exist out of our time concept. Maybe, it's how they track important, dangerous, favourite people.

That's nice and I think it fits well with Bakker's ignorance mantra.  Humans (who ignorant of the true purpose of the Mark) take it as a sign of damnation because they assume to know.  If that is the case, I don't know that this mystery will be solved in TUC.  Seems like that might be the kind of thing he could hold back to the last last book.

geoint

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« Reply #98 on: July 21, 2014, 10:45:06 pm »
Quote from: Octavian
I just finished a reread of the first series I and I have to say that I found the Cishaurim to be more interesting this time around. Notably in the raw power that they yield. The Scarlet Spires thought them to be less powerful than Anagogic Schools but the battle for Shimeh proved that to be otherwise and I totally forgot about the way that they assassinated the former Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires.

With that said, I am surprised that the Probability Trance did not show Kellhus a way to implement them in TTT. More maybe it did but was not beneficial? I understand that there was no way to keep them alive being that they were the priests of a heretic religion, but the fact that their sorcery was markless is something that captivates me.

We know that some gods at least war against Kellhus, yet the Cishaurim bare no mark and it was never stated that the gods were blind to them as they are to the no god. Yet they were not actively against them, even though they took away many of their followers. Does they attest to the rightness of Fanim? If so, what does it mean now that it is gone. Thoughts?

I had never considered that the cishaurim might be right because I was so sure that all sorcerers were damned, but that is a very interesting perspective. 


I have nothing useful to add except a few questions that popped into my head lol.


Are the Cishaurim even damned?  (sorry if this is already discussed here, Im too sleepy to read 7 pages)

Can an anagogic or gnostic sorcerer that is damned/has the mark become cishaurim and if so, does it effect his mark?

Cüréthañ

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« Reply #99 on: July 21, 2014, 10:55:28 pm »
The mark stains the world, not just the sorcerer.  Apparently, only the aporos (chorae) undoes it.
Retracing his bloody footprints, the Wizard limped on.

mrganondorf

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« Reply #100 on: July 22, 2014, 01:49:26 am »
yeah, geoint, it's a lot to read!

I don't think we really know much about damnation at all.  For all I know, some sorcerers may be stained but not damned and of course your average Joe is going to be unstained and damned.  That's such a big mystery, I expect we'll hear some about it in TUC but he might hold a lot of that secret for the very last Earwan book.

I like where you're going with with anagogic/gnostic to cishaurim.  Are you thinking about Iyokus?  He's a bundle of secrets, got to be.  Blindness + Titirga does cool stuff, so you know Iyokus is going to do something sweet, prolly at Dagliash.  Maybe he'll be the one anagogic sorcerer able to raise the anagogis to Mandate level sorcery.

geoint

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« Reply #101 on: July 22, 2014, 03:36:14 am »
yeah, geoint, it's a lot to read!

I don't think we really know much about damnation at all.  For all I know, some sorcerers may be stained but not damned and of course your average Joe is going to be unstained and damned.  That's such a big mystery, I expect we'll hear some about it in TUC but he might hold a lot of that secret for the very last Earwan book.

I like where you're going with with anagogic/gnostic to cishaurim.  Are you thinking about Iyokus?  He's a bundle of secrets, got to be.  Blindness + Titirga does cool stuff, so you know Iyokus is going to do something sweet, prolly at Dagliash.  Maybe he'll be the one anagogic sorcerer able to raise the anagogis to Mandate level sorcery.


I dont remember what Titirga is. 

I hadn't really thought about Iyokus.  I know hes still alive, the new grandmaster of the SS and that he taught Kellhus the Daimos.  Other than that, I hadn't really assumed he would come into play much.  I guess I kinda assumed that only the mandate (not the entire army) would make it all the way to the arc.  Silly and totally unfair to everybody else participating I know lol, but I just assumed they were all meant to be pawns to be sacrificed to get Kellhus and his most useful sorcerers all the way there. 



Heres another random thought; I really wonder about damnation in the bakker universe.  I remember the college of Luthymae (spelling?) were those with the gift who chose to serve the gods instead.  Now though, with Kellhus reversing the stigma about sorcery I imagine the college would be absorbed into the schools.  I wonder what those new sorcerers will think when they die and are in hell or whatever because Kellhus convinced them sorcery was ok lol. 

mrganondorf

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« Reply #102 on: July 22, 2014, 05:54:35 am »
Titirga!

http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/stories/the-false-sun/

He is so WIRG

I had never thought about Luthymae being absorbed--that would bolster the ranks.  One strike against it is that, I think, learning sorcery has to be done by the young (unless you are a Dunyain) because of the 'meanings.'  However, if anyone can find a way around this, it's gonna be Kellhus.

If he can teach Sacarees how to meta-gnosis, maybe he can teach Luthymae to normal gnosis.

I like the idea of the College of Luthymae and I think that if any school was really clever they would include something like it in their network.  They have to come across a few individuals who have the Gift, but are not ideal candidates for learning sorcery.  These people would be invaluable spies.

Garet Jax

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« Reply #103 on: August 25, 2014, 02:13:20 pm »
Aside from the Cishaurim being referred to as a "Chorus" on several occasions, is there any direct textual evidence that they sing when performing the Psukhe?


During the cast I was corrected when I said they didn't sing, but I can't find any evidence that they do other than the above referenced Chorus connection.


I know I am probably missing/forgetting something obvious here, but any help?
« Last Edit: August 25, 2014, 02:15:26 pm by Garet Jax »

Aural

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« Reply #104 on: August 25, 2014, 02:18:12 pm »
There are references to all sorcerers singing, but I don't think it's meant to be taking literally. Did Mallahet sing in front of Ikurei?