Earwa > The Almanac: PON Edition

TDTCB, Ch. 3

<< < (2/3) > >>

What Came Before:

--- Quote from: Madness ---sologdin, you seem an increasingly well read and interesting person. Cheers.

Also, lockesnow, I spent a little time trying to move the posts from Ch. 2 but I'm discovering severe limitations on certain administrative abilities, due to the nature of the "free" forumer package. I'll put it to the forumer wizards.

Sumna

If the world is a game whose rules are written by the God, and sorcerers are those who cheat and cheat, then who has written the rules of sorcery?

- ZARATHINIUS, A DEFENCE OF THE ARCANE ARTS

I have to say, I think you're being a little analytical too early on this one, sologdin. From what we've read so far, from Achamian's perspective Faith seems the rule in the Three Seas. Society is completely oriented around it and reality itself seems to make a distinction. Think of the early descriptions of the Cishaurim lack of mark and the destructive nature of Sorcery - it all suggests a breaking with the natural order, somehow, on the part of Schoolmen. This also contrasts with Kellhus' POV in the prologue, who rejects most of Leweth's extracurricular metaphysical musings on account of his particular perspectival lens.

If there is a God and he writes the rule of the world, who writes the rules of sorcery?

I've always wondered how much Bakker's influenced by the metaphysics of Christian Gnostics.

As interesting is the fact of the title and that this is in context of some kind of defense. Is the author proposing that God must write the rules of sorcery or that the rules of sorcery denote that there is no God?

Early Spring, 4110 Year-of-the-Tusk, En Route to Sumna[/i]

§3.1 – Momas

sologdin has focused on themes of dialectics, such as, ancient and recent or present. I just thought I'd add that §3.1 reflects Momas and the introduction of another God in its arc - I believe that is Husyelt (of the Prologue and Leweth's perspective) and now Momas. Also, I find the idea of those Nroni merchantmen praying to a God to protect their boat, and, ultimately, the passage of a blasphemer a tasty contradiction.

§3.2 – Men & the Few

Bakker seems to use §3.2 to muse on the contradiction between men and the Few. sologdin's noted the "weight" of certain places. We're introduced to Sumna, “the ancient centre of the Inrithi Faith” (p83), and how "for the Inrithi, this was the place where the heavens inhabited the earth. Sumna, the Hagerna, and the Junriuma … were bound in the very purpose of history” (p83).

(click to show/hide)Also, could there be an opposite of Topoi?

By the way, for those of us going through on a the reread, rather than the read as lockesnow aptly put it, I'm going to acknowledge that my perspective is going to lean heavily on the "apparent" supernatural explicit in the series as its something I've doubted on many of my reads.
Achamian seems to be reflecting on the nature of social weight rather than supernatural weight - that is, the weight of shared meaning that human connotations bring, which we decide unconsciously or consciously, to objects and places. Inrau seems a mechanism for this reflection at first, "as though his righteous joy could be attached to any act of madness” (p83), the weight of meaning that makes us kill for the True Cross or Jerusalem.

Even worse, Bakker muses, is the idea that one might spout this meaning like a font. "To possess this momentum was disease enough, but to be the carrier … Maithanet carried a plague whose primary symptom was certainty” (p83).

The boat captain approaches Achamian on the skiff, “standing somewhat nearer than prescribed by the dictates of jnan – a common low caste error” (p84), which, I believe, is the first mention of jnan, or the idea of a gradient of cultural behavior. The captain comments on the dangers of Achamian coming to the Sumna. “Someone like me… A sorcerer in a holy city”(p84), Achamian reflects.

Achamian lashes back at the man, suggesting that people "never know what we are ... That's the horrible fact of sinners. We're indistinguishable from the righteous" (p84). Bakker takes this as a junction for explaining the experiential differences between the mundane perception and that of the Few, who perceive “the very fabric of existence. The onta” (p85).

"Am I so different from this man?" (p86), Achamians wonders. “How could one not feel isolated, detached, when existence itself answered to their tongue?” (p86). Achamian also reflects on the strictly destructive nature of sorcery. "The power, the brilliant flurries of light, possessed an irresistible direction, and it was the wrong one: the direction of destruction ... When sorcerers sing, men die” (p86).

The Gnosis is set apart from other sorceries as "knowledge of the Ancient North … The Gnosis of the Nonmen Magi, the Quya, refined through another thousand years of human cunning” (p87).

“In so many ways he was a god to these fools … a sorcerer who forgot this hatred forgot how to stay alive” (p87).

Overall, §3.2 reflects my choice in passage name - the arc of Bakker's words, the reason he's put them to paper, seems to be communicate the distinction between men to the Few and the Few to the Mandate.

§3.3 Faith & Sorcery

Achamian walks the streets of Sumna … the very heart of God (p87). I also find it interesting, like Achamian, that the Schools are allowed missions in Sumna. It seems very much like giving the Devil an Embassy in Heaven.

More about “The Chronicle of the Tusk was the most ancient and therefore the more thunderous voice of the past, so ancient that it was itself without any clear history … ribboned by characters, the Tusk recorded the great migratory invasions that marked the ascendency of Men in Earwa … had been in the possession of one tribe, the Ketyai” (p87-88).

A man jostles Achamian in the push and Achamian notices the singular direction of many warlike men. “’Maithanet has called the faithful to Sumna,’ he said, suspicious of Achamian’s ignorance. ‘He’s to reveal the object of the Holy War.’” (p88)

Bakker leaves time for it to sting, “Manipulation upon manipulation. Even the Quorum played games with their own pieces” (p89), before the man adds “Pray that it’s the Schools we war against, my friend, rather than the Fanim. Sorcery is ever the greater cancer' ... Achamian almost agreed” (p89).

§3.4 Esmenet & the Consult

Achamian rises with Esmenet, assumptively the girl from Sumna. There is some obvious miscommunication happening between these two lovers as they reflect together on Achamian's Fevers & Esmenet’s lost daughter.

(click to show/hide)That is some further substantiation that Bakker already had many subtle AE plots included in PON.
“Achamian had come to Sumna for two reasons: to determine whether this new Shriah planned to wage his Holy War against the Schools, and to learn whether the Consult had any hand in these remarkable events” (p91).

“How else could one describe a war without a foe?” (p91)

Esmenet asks Achamian if he intends to turn Inrau and it leads to the suggestion that Achamian is mad. From Kellhus' perspective, we could argue that we've seen evidence of the Consult's remains in the North, the Nonman and its Sranc, but arguably, even the thing that took Geshrunni can't be pinned directly to the Consult.

The Question of the Consult defines Achamian in §3.4. He suggests to Esmenet that “whether I’m mad or no depends on whether my enemy exists” (p92).

§3.5 Inrau & Achamian

lockesnow raised the question of just what happens in the initial paragraph with Inrau's perspective.

(click to show/hide)We do know from the episode with Kellhus and the Wathi Doll in TWP that some sorcerous mutterings can affect sorcery without staining the person. Also, for those of us from Three-Seas, Bakker had said that Inrau is defined by the fact that he may already be marked and yet somehow has been offered redemption by the Thousand Temples.
“Words that battered whatever will remained to him. Words that walked with his limbs … everything rushed into the bearded man … light spilling from his working mouth. Flakes of sun in his eyes “… Achamian” (p93).

For my money, I've always supposed that this is a dream that Inrau has - communication from Achamian - and Bakker transitions awkwardly to the actual moment of physicality meeting. However, the specificity of "battered whatever will remained to him... that walked with his limbs" does beg the question of just what is happening.

(click to show/hide)Is this evidence of Compulsion and does Achamian simply delude himself about using no sorcery on Inrau later?
Ultimately, Inrau asks why his old world has come to threaten his new world. “The world has had the habit … of breaking the back of my promises” (p95), Achamian answers.

§3.6 The Recruitment of Inrau & The slap of Lord Sarcellus

Bakker switches back to Achamian's perspective within the meeting of Inrau. We learn some interesting tidbits about Maithanet, specifically, “he’s to be obeyed, not worshipped. That’s why he took his name … mai’tathana … Thoti-Eannorean, the language of the Tusk. It means ‘instruction’” (p95-96).

Achamian reveals that he was sent by the Mandate and begins to attempt to divide Inrau against the Thousand Temples. I also noted the quote sologdin did about “Frames – give them greater frames with which to interpret the treachery out of their action. Before all, a spy who recruits spies must be a master storyteller.” (p98)

§3.6 continues with the altercation with Lord Sarcellus (p99) where he hints at some kind of previous association with Achamian, “How I’ve longed to do that, pig,” (p101).

§3.7 False Prophet & Holy War

We find Achamian later at the declaration of the Holy War, in the central square of the Hagerna. He muses about the architecture, the crush of the Faithful, and his mission. “If Maithanet declares against the Schools … Me … the first casualty of the new Scholastic Wars” (p104).

Here we have Achamian deluding himself, perhaps, about the fact of Inrau's conversion, “the fact that he’d succeeded without Cants balmed his sense of shame” (p106), and the anomalous nature of the Gnosis “If he failed his mission, the Quorum would kill Inrau … The Gnosis, even the few rudiments known to Inrau, was more valuable than any single life” (p106).

Bakker spends moments meditating on the nature of Maithanet's power preceding this and then the College of Luthymae is introduced.

“If he’d used Cants of Compulsion, sooner or later the Luthymae, the college of monks and priests that managed the Thousand Temples’ own vast network of spies, would have identified the mark of sorcery upon Inrau. Not all the Few became sorcerers. Many used the “gift” to war against the Schools.”

Finally, Maithanet is introduced and his high oratory rings in the air.

“By itself,” the Shriah was crying, “Fanimry is an affront to the God … These people, these Kianene, are an obscene race, followers of a False Prophet. A False Prophet, my children! The Tusk tells us there is no greater abomination than the False Prophet … We shall war and we shall war until SHIMEH IS FREE!” (p109)

Following his broad declarations and Achamian's recognition of his former student Proyas, Maithanet tells Achamian he should flee, that sorcerers are not welcome. Achamian knows that Maithanet must be of the Few because “only the Few could see the Few.” (p111)

§3.8 The Temple of the Field of War

The chapter ends with a perspective from Nersei Proyas, Prince of Conriya. He walks within the Junriuma, the Vault-of-the-Tusk, with Gotian, Grandmaster of the Shrial Knights and finally, we witness...

“The Tusk. A great winding horn of ivory … suspended by chains that soared upward … Holiest of holies … The first verses of the Gods. The first scripture. Here.” (p112) *my bolding*

In a big way, Nersei Proyas makes a covenant with his God and the Inrithi Holy War. “I submit to your Word, God. I commend my soul to the fierce task that you have laid before me. I shall make a temple of the field of war” (p113).

(click to show/hide)I'll note that this reflects an interesting arc. This is exactly within the convictions of the Scylvendi, almost word for word.
Maithanet approaches the Prince and warns him that conspirators and spies are coming... like Achamian, the sorcerer.

(click to show/hide)Arguably, this is also when Maithanet might have started hatching any plans on helping his coming brother to have access to the Gnosis. This might also explain the enigmatic purpose of asking Proyas to assist Achamian in TWP.
--- End quote ---

What Came Before:

--- Quote from: The Sharmat ---
--- Quote from: Madness --- (click to show/hide)Also, could there be an opposite of Topoi?
--- End quote ---

(click to show/hide)Anarcane ground, like Atrithau, perhaps?
--- End quote ---

What Came Before:

--- Quote from: sologdin --- (click to show/hide)opposite can mean different things.
if topoi are intrusions on the world by hell because of trauma in the world, then:
converse-topoi - intrusions on hell by the world because of trauma;
inverse-topoi - intrusions on the world by hell because of anti-trauma; and
contratopoi - instrusions on hell by the world because of anti-trauma.

WTF is anti-trauma?  too much good sex?  is there any good sex in RSB?  narcotics?  some.  religious zeal?  too much.
--- End quote ---

What Came Before:

--- Quote from: Madness ---The Sharmat got my gist - a most excellent suggestion by the way, Sharmat.

sologdin,

(click to show/hide)In my suggestion of opposites, I meant "if topoi are intrusions on the world by hell because of trauma in the world, then:" opposite-topoi are intrusions on the world by heaven because of... intrinsic-Goodness?
--- End quote ---

What Came Before:

--- Quote from: Callan S. --- (click to show/hide)Isn't Anarcane ground where men and gods have met?

This itself meeting itself possibly cancels out the capacity for ambiguity that allows magic manipulation (magic manipulation (via logic) being something like playing with the edge conciousness of god). Once things become clear, there's no more room for coin tricks...
--- End quote ---

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page