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  Also, it seems a bit strange that there is only one Cishaurim.  Can Meppa not train anyone else?  Or do the Cish not train so much because they don't understand their stuff?  If that's the case, why only one? 

The cishies were not just an order of sorcerer priests, they were also a tribal clan - the Indara-Kishauri.
 
This, together with the supression of fanimry and Meppa's ignorance of his personal heritage kinda makes him training acolytes unlikely to me.

Cish metaphysics are faith based; the Kian have likely had their culture smashed after the holy war - and even if a child wanted to learn of the kipfa'aifan etc, their ignorance probably couldn't be washed away by a crazy old dude with a very bad memory.

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Not really on topic, but does the light still come out of the eyes of the blinded Cish?

And one more thought, why the eyes and mouth? How about the ears and nose as well, I mean they are all orifices.

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all orifices

good point.  borne water pours from honey-scented anus?

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There's a couple other examples but it's consistent throughout the books:

"'Demon!' A voice like a thunderclap.

They turned from the blood-soaked marble, saw an old, eyeless man approach them from the deeper temple. Something flashed from his forehead, like a stolen star" (TTT, p407).

"In trios, the weaker crouched and dashed through the ruins, white-blue energies spilling from their foreheads like water toppling toward unseen grounds" (p445).

Also... topical and of interest:

"The Scarlet Spires knew of the Nine Incandati, those Primaries whose backs could bear the most Water, but they had no inkling as to their true strength. Now the greatest of the Psukari assailed them: Soekti, Inkorot, Hab'hara, Fanfarokar, Sartmandri... And they could not cope" (p455).

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There's a couple other examples but it's consistent throughout the books:
Also... topical and of interest:

"The Scarlet Spires knew of the Nine Incandati, those Primaries whose backs could bear the most Water, but they had no inkling as to their true strength. Now the greatest of the Psukari assailed them: Soekti, Inkorot, Hab'hara, Fanfarokar, Sartmandri... And they could not cope" (p455).

Yeah, I have long wondered if Meppa could be one of the Incandati.  Malowebi's description makes it sound like Meppa is about as powerful as a Cish can be. 

Also, it seemed implied that the Scarlet Spires erred in their estimation of the Cish.  The SS arrogantly believed that their top light-spitters were superior to the top Cish, and it sounds like that was not true...the Primaries were better than the SS. 

Could Meppa possibly have his powers improved by his amnesia?  Is amnesia some manner of blindness too?  Could the purity of his faith be improved by being unencumbered by memory?

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There's been talk of the lack of memory improving Meppa's powers.

There actually are some intriguing parallels to a couple real-life neurological disorders, wherein people experience a visual world, they cannot physically see.

Some relevancies while I was searching for our other thread, Trisk:

Proyas recalling Shimeh:

"There had been five of them, Primaries, mightier, despite the crudity of their art, than the most accomplished Schoolmen. Five hellish figured floating high above the burning city, their eyes gouged so they might see the Water-that-was-Light - and Anasurimbor Kellhus had slain them all" (WLW, p556).

Psatma beholding Meppa, which I omitted before, as it's not strictly a "physical" description:

"'You bear the Water within you,' she said to the Last Cishaurim. She drew a palm across the plane of her abdomen. "Like an ocean! You can strike me down with your merest whim! And yet you stand here bandying threats and insults?'

'I serve my Lord Padirajah'" (p398).

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That text is interesting. 

It implies that the Primaries of the Cishaurim are indeed superior to the best of the SS...but it can't mean better than the Mandati can it?

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Certainly not better than the Mandati!

Though I guess it is possible the speaker in the quoted sections is the grandmaster of the SS right? So I would guess in his inner monologue 'all schoolmen' could easily be just the anagogic schools. A kind of self justification of  why the Mandate are stronger, they aren't really schoolmen but rather something else entirely, a way of saying "we are the best".

Though after the scholastic wars I'm sure most of the schools know just how strong the Mandate are. But, again, sons tend to forget the plight of their fathers.

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And one more thought, why the eyes and mouth? How about the ears and nose as well, I mean they are all orifices.

Seems fairly straightforward to me.  Eyes and mouth are associated with meaning drawing and illustrating meaning. 
It's metaphysics, not physics.  The manifestation of sorcerous power is tied to how the practioners percieve the nature of reality.

For the cish, they were originally a tribe of kianene who distributed water to the needy in the desert.  They saved Fane from dehydration and accepted him into the tribe after his relevations and he, in turn, taught his insights within the frame of their religon.  Thus 'water-bearers'. 

When it comes to relative power levels, of course the SS belived their top practioners more powerful.  But that's framed by who ultimately thinks they are correct in a metaphysical sense, yes?  My arguements are more effective because I percieve them to be true, as it were.

In practice I think its more like an arguement between theological philosphers.  The cish primary might win via the passion of their arguement, or the SS grandmaster might triumph by revealing flaws through the illustrative power of an effective anology.  Obviously a mandati war singer can lay down some impressive statistical ananlysis and analytical geometries that completely undermine either of the former's unweildy arguements 

The cishies fighting in Shimeh would have been bolstered by desperation and fighting in one of their holiest places, whereas the SS were risking themselves for vengeance's sake in a foriegn land, this would also boost the odds in the cishies favour for this encounter.

I think Meppa's power levels would be increased above a primary's level, because he lacks personal history that would interfere with his ability to bear water.  The cish remove the eyes to block out the profane; how much more effective to also remove the memories of seeing the profane?

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Eyes an mouth and not nose, but why not ears? Why not deafen yourself to better hear the gods, to better hear their words and therefore be able to project the meaning without the mundane distractions of your own world. Why not have light pour from the ears just as the eyes and mouth.

By your own argument drawing meaning is important, thus to better see they blind, why then not to better hear - deafen?

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The meaning of sorcerous words has no real importance to the ear.  The eyes see the onta, the mouth is the conduit for the power that changes it.  The eyes and mouth are the two organs involved in channeling anagogic power.

Akka mentions that using a dead language is important in removing the ambiguity of meaning caused by interpretive listening, so I think that may indeed be a form of deafness similar to the way the cishies remove their eyes? 

From memory, the cishies evidence their conduit with sorcerous power with light emenating from their forehead, or 'third eye' (except in Moenghus' death scene, but it's uncertain if he is using cish sorcery, or any sorcery at all there - it might just be from the chorae disolving his soul). 

I'm not sure if they make utterences as part of spell casting at all... anyone?

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I wish I weren't sick and working all weekend - into tuesday, anyhow. Not to mention, school.

I can't wait to parse these threads for new ones. So many quality threads of thought.

For the moment, Curethan, I think you've hit on something with the loss of memory increasing the power of the Psukhe, analogous to the loss of eyes. Our memories are associative. They provide an aspect of stability for the physical and psychic (or mental) realities around us.

Also, Athjeari and I almost got into it years ago on old Three-Seas about linguistics and sorcery. Now Bakker only has a real rudimentary knowledge of linguistics - more than enough to dupe the average reader and remain consistent - but there's some neat analogies that can be drawn between the two.

The initial thought there was that Gnostic sorcery in the books reflects an inutteral and an utteral - that is, the gap between thought and language.

So little time. Fucking work.

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If a lack of memory is significant for Meppa's power, it makes me wonder, as I've wondered before, if Meppa is someone's experiment.  For example, what if Moe speculated that removing not just eyes but memory would create, as Madness calls it, a metapsukhari? 

We've gone over it a bit, but there is one more little piece in WLW that makes me wonder if Meppa isn't really powerful, and it's this:  I don't have the quote handy, but Malo is reflecting back on having seen Meppa just own the one Saik sorcerer in Iothiah.  Now if he's a Primary that isn't so significant in and of itself.  But Malo also notes how beautful the display is.  Now this could be nothing...it could simply be a description of the Psukhe in action that Bakker is giving us.  But for some reason it makes me wonder if it's some kind of extra hint about Meppa's significance.

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OK - I had another random thought. 

I'd joked in the past that Meppa was a reincarnation of Fane.  I was truly joking, but I think that there's a possibility that I'm not sure we've considered yet.  If someone else has touched on this, I apologize. 

What if Meppa is not Moe or any experiment by Moe or anyone.  What if he's not Xin of Cnaiur or Inrau via crackpot.  What if he's also not a surviving Incandati from Shimeh. 

What if he is another person who "found" the Water just like Fane did?  And if that's the case, what could it mean?

From what we know, the Water was found by Fane in the desert, and this was both the discovery of a new form of sorcery as well as a founding of a new religion as well as possibly a revelation from the Solitary God. 

But others were able to find the Water once Fane did, but no one had before.  Since the discovery of Water directly coincides w/ the founding of Fanimry, does that not imply that passionate Fanim belief really goes get some people access to the Water?  And it is that and that only since no one had Water before Fane?  If that is so, does that not suggest that the Fanim are really onto something, and the Solitary God could be legit?  Or perhaps they've got part of it wrong, but they're still onto something?

If any of that is making any sense, I do wonder if the Solitary God did indeed "send" someone to the Fanim by revealing again the Water that had been lost to the world at Shimeh.

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Spontaneous revelation's a neat idea, Trisk... I still wonder who has anoited Fanayal as well..

Also, the description of the Psukhe is in a post of mine on p3 of this thread... I think, it's directly after the "identifying Meppa as Primary" sentence.