Yeah, IIRC, Bakker said the salting is a side-effect. The problem is that he never stated what it's a side-effect of.

To me, it reads like a Chorae shunts a sorcerer into the Outside, somehow drawing back an equal mass/volume of either salt or water depending on whether it's a Schoolman or a Cish.

But I still have no idea why that happens. Why does paradox shunt imperfection into the realm of the subjective?

EDIT: And even if that can be resolved, it still doesn't make sense to me that paradox can undo the non-cognitive Psukhe.

This is all complicated somewhat by Mimara looking at a Chorae with the Judging Eye and seeing it as actually divine after all. So maybe "Tear of God" is not just an epithet coined by ignorant fools who don't recognise a sorcerous artefact when they see one. Did the exiled Aporetic Quya who allied with the Inchoroi accidentally create something thaumaturgical rather than sorcerous?

I don't think an explanation for how Chorae work that treats them as purely sorcerous items will be able to resolve all these issues.

It can't be a real influence if Bakker wasn't aware of whatever that thing is, but that doesn't mean one can't make the argument that there are similarities and parallels even though Bakker didn't put them there intentionally.

I would argue that we are all influenced by lots of things we're not consciously aware of.

An example. A friend of mine, who likes to play elves (or the equivalent) in fantasy RPGs, always gives his characters names that sound sort of vaguely Akkadian. Now, he doesn't do this deliberately. He just thinks those sorts of names sound right for elves somehow. The reason he thinks this is because, years and years ago (in 2002), I started giving all my elf NPCs Akkadian names whenever I GMed an RPG that had elf NPCs in it. And the reason I did that in 2002 is because I heard Therion's The Siren of the Woods for the first time and really liked it (it literally completely changed my taste in music). And that song is sung in Akkadian. My friend hasn't ever listened to that song as far as I know. And yet, when he fires up TES: Skyrim and picks a name for his Altmer character, he is being influenced, indirectly, by that Therion song that he's (probably) never heard.

But yeah, I agree that there are similarities and parallels that the author didn't consciously intend. And that we should consider those separately from deliberate homages.

You mean we were supposed to read the "what has come before" bits? I have to admit I've never bothered, and never felt like I missed anything by not bothering. But then I actually like Bakker's tendency to ambiguity and obscurantism and feel absolutely no need to read a summary at the start of the next novel to make sure I 'got' everything. I'd have preferred the pages wasted (from my PoV) on the WHCB summaries to be spent on more new and interesting revelations.

I always thought Kellhus was an early version of the Holy Emprah and he was merely fighting the unification wars.

There are quite a few points of thematic intersection between TSA and 40K. But then there are also some between TSA and the Elder Scrolls games, and of course between TSA and Tolkien. But who can truly fathom the Darkness of cultural and philosophical influences that comes before all fictional works?

Because the EG is intended to be an in-universe artefact, the work of Earwan scholars.

My only problem with that interpretation is that Harapior warned her not to try and cant with the Collar on after she'd proved torture didn't work on her, after all the singing and the other Nonmen saying that she tormented him. He still seemed to think the Collar would kill her if she used sorcery, even though he absolutely knew that pain had no hold over her. To me, that implies that merely being able to ignore pain shouldn't normally protect against an Agonic Collar, and that Serwa had to do something else (that Harapior could not conceive of) to defeat it.