Quote from: sciborg2 on May 04, 2021, 07:09:30 am

"Function" is definitely the tricky word here, as otherwise it could be a Classical Theism God who is apart from creation but also creation's concurrent cause.

Maybe the Divine Function is meant to be a matter of what outputs are produced by what inputs, sort of like a Relation that precedes Relata?

Is that sort of like a Platonic form of Relation?

Regarding the Third Sight (which refers to the way Cishaurim see without seeing), the idea is that Psukari can actually see souls - those things invisible to the naked eye. Souls 'shine' to the degree they reflect the 'proportion of the God.' So the implication is that the Dunyain somehow reflect the proper proportion..

Quote from: sciborg2 on April 15, 2021, 04:41:25 pm

Quote from: TaoHorror on April 15, 2021, 12:03:32 pm

Starz are mother-fuckers, I tell ya. First they cancel Boss ( incomplete ) and then Counterpart ( quazi complete, but had more gas in the story to tell ) and now American Gods ( serious cliffhanger ). Really? I'm guessing because it wasn't watched by enough people, but plenty of people waited for the entire thing to be released to binge watch it, like myself. Anyways, I loved the show, some killer gay/trans sex going on near the end of season 3 ( an extraordinary scene, amazing render of unrepressed human love ).

I guess I'll have to finish the book to learn the end ( found the book boring - but I guess I suffer a lack of imagination given how beautiful the show is ). Still worth watching even though the story "ends" on a cliffhanger.

Gaiman's book, while the inspiration, does feel less exciting than the show...but then I read the book years ago. I do recall enjoying it, so it's probably worth a library rental at the least?

Yeah, it's a weakness of mine, I get lost with too much description in books. I make the mistake thinking I have to visualize it accurately in order to understand it. I think I would've understood the TSA books better if I didn't let myself get bogged down in the environment details. I think that's why I gave up on American Gods, I didn't appreciate the scenery of it enough. Watching the tv show was a trip as I'm recollecting the parts of the book and I'm like, I no way visualized it that cool.

There are some rumors circulating that imply dragons are perhaps living Ciphrang or moving topoi, although for the life of me I cannot find any quotes confirming it.

Quote from: sciborg2 on May 04, 2021, 08:03:57 pm

Do you remember where the passage about this was where it is stated the Inverse Fire shows different scenes of suffering each time you look?

Quote

“After a time,” he said vacantly, “the sheer profundity of it, the monstrous scale of the anguish ... it becomes soothing ... sublime ...”

The sluicing of firelight across white skin.

“And never ... never repeating, always different ... like some kind of broken arithmetic ...”

TUC, Chapter 17.

Pa’bikru—“Warring Glimpse” (Invitic). Known as “Cage-carvings” in the Eastern Three Seas, Pa’bikru are the product of the peculiar spiritual sensibilities of Nilnamesh. In the twilight preceding the ruin of the Ceneian Empire, a nameless monk translated Memgowa’s Celestial Aphorisms into the Invitic dialect of Sheyic, thus inspiring the famed “screen sculpture” of Nilnamesh.

The techniques evolved wildly over the centuries, but the premise was always the same: the sculptor would carve miniature scenes, many of them drawn from the Tusk that they then placed in a so-called “peering box” or behind some other obstruction. The original idea was to recreate Memgowa’s conception of the “Blind Beggar Soul.” Like Ajencis, the famed Zeumi sage was forever arguing the folly of Men, but unlike the famed Kyranean philosopher, he argued that it was the inability of the soul to know itself, and not the inability of intellect to grasp the World, that was the origin of the problem. In Celestial Aphorisms, the Sage continually returned to the Rebuke of Angeshraël in The Chronicle of the Tusk, the famed story where War, dread Gilgaöl, upbraids the Prophet for “peering through cracks and describing skies.” He also uses the legend of Ilbaru, a Zeumi folk tale about a man who spies his wife through a cracked shutter, and confusing her attempt to save his wounded brother for an act of passion, murders her, and then must watch his brother die. His argument, refracted through the smoked glass of his aphoristic style, is that the soul is that which sees, and therefore can scarcely be seen. Thus the aesthetic of screen sculpture: the creation of scenes that utterly contradicted the way they appeared when seen through some fixed aperture.

Historically, the most famous of these was Modhoraparta’s “Dance of the Demons,” where the face of the God of Gods viewed through the aperture became a group of demonic monstrosities viewed from all other angles. The rumour of the work so incensed Shriah Ekyannus IX that in 3682 he outlawed all art works that “blaspheme the Simple, the Pure, and the True with foul Complication.” At his trial in Invishi, Modhoraparta claimed that he wanted to show the how the myriad evils suffered by Men find themselves redeemed in the God of Gods. Indeed, all the sculptor’s acts, let alone his work and his claims, argued that he was as devout as any who would presume to judge him. He would be burned for impiety nonetheless: reason counts for naught in matters of outrage—truth even less so. In those days, the Thousand Temples was always eager to display its authority in Nilnamesh, where the scalding sun and indolent air seemed to engender heresy as regularly as harvests.

Quote from: sciborg2 on May 04, 2021, 06:32:40 pm

and there was some mention in the one of the books or Tales that the Inverse Fire never shows the same scene of torment twice...

More specifically, the Inverse Fire is projecting atemporal onto temporal, which isn't going to be in any way straightforward, or even complete, to perceive.