I think the connection is less metaphysical and more "what did I have for breakfast yesterday? I gotta watch my cholesterol." Point being the elju serves as the Nonman's ground and re-orients the Nonman's sense of self by telling him what he's done, how he did it, who his friends and enemies are, what he swore never to do again etc. Stuff like that, really practical stuff. It's literally keeping a person around to remind you who you are.
I think if the connection was more between souls then Mekeretririgaighagigiggggg, one of the most powerful Nonmen with a very storied history, wouldn't have elevated a sranc of all things to that position.
Interestingly, the character Elju in the Old Testament is a friend of Job, his role in the story being essentially to remind Job that suffering/trauma can serve a purpose in God's plan and isn't necessarily just a punishment for sin.
a nice empty vessel to be filled up by nonman memories, i mean soul. ... What is the 'heart' and how are memories stored and tranfered.Ooh. :o
oy, empty vessel is a great way of conceptualizing it.Interestingly, the character Elju in the Old Testament is a friend of Job, his role in the story being essentially to remind Job that suffering/trauma can serve a purpose in God's plan and isn't necessarily just a punishment for sin.
That is seriously awesome.
How about transplanting parts of ones soul? That would make sranc a nice empty vessel to be filled up by nonman memories, i mean soul.
Though I don't really think the Elju process is some kind of soul binding, locke did bring up an interesting point. What is the 'heart' and how are memories stored and tranfered. It is likely some kind of process involved with the soul since, like mentioned above, pretty much everything in Earwa is tied to the soul.
a nice empty vessel to be filled up by nonman memories, i mean soul. ... What is the 'heart' and how are memories stored and tranfered.
...
Perhaps the Grasping actually outright replaces the sorcerer's soul with Seswatha's?
So long as the Mandate (and now the Swayal Sisterhood) exist, Seswatha is remembered. It does seem like there should be some sort of link between the Grasping and the elju...
Then maybe if Seswatha was damned, for one reason or another (how deep a sin is infidelity?), then all the Mandati are therefore damned for sharing his soul. No matter what gnostic user TJE looks on, it sees only the blighted soul of Seswatha (Except, notably, Kellhus).
Did not RSB say that "The Four Revelations Of Cinial’jin," was a glimpse into how the consciousness\memory of Nonmen works? If so, then perhaps a better understanding the Atrccity Tale may help in understand how an Elju functions.
"We are many!" the Erratic roared. "We are legion! What you call your soul is nothing but a confusion, an inability! A plurality that cannot count the moments that divide it and so calls itself One."
I don't see much of a connection to their Elju except that perhaps they would serve as an anchor to 'now'.
Only when memory is stripped away! Only then is being revealed as pure Becoming! Only when the past dies can we shrug aside the burden that is our soul!
"Incariol,"... "Why that name?"
N: "Because I wander."
A: "and Cleric?"
N: "It is a tradition... I think... A tradition among the Siqu to take a mannish name."
A: "You are Nil'giccas"... The Last King of Mansions."
N: "No, He is dead."
A: "No, He is quite Alive, gazing upon me"
N: "You are confused, mortal, Rise."
A: "Please, my lord. Take me as your book!... Regain your honour! Reclaim your glory!"
N: "So... You offer me oblivion?" "No, I will ruin and I will break." "Honour?" "Love? What are these but dross before oblivion? No! I will seize the world and I will shake from it what misery, what anguish, I can. I will remember!"
N: "This... This is where I am meant to die."
N: "Run, Save them while you still can."
A: "Them?"
N: "Your wife and child."
N: "I am Quaya! I am Ishroi! Five of your sons and daughters I have slain!"
Wutteat: "YOU ARE BUT A SNAIL! A SNAIL TORN FROM IT'S SHELL!"
N: "I am Nil'giccas-I am Cleric! And you will hear my sermon!"
A: "You don't have to do this!"
N: "Because I remember no triumph... Only betrayal! Heartbreak and ruin!
A: "I will name you! I will be your book, and you will read me! You are Nil'giccas! The last King of Mansions-the greatest of the Siqu!"
N: Nil'giccas! you call-beseech! as if trying to awaken some truth slumbering within me. You think Nil'giccas is something I have lost! And therefore something I can recover! You forget, that before the Nonman King's passing, I did not exist! I can no more recover him than you can recover your mother's virgin womb. I am Incariol! Cleric! And you shall not survive my lesson! You think the cripple! You think Cleric the ruin of someone whole! But you are wrong, Seswatha! I am the Truth! "We are many!" the Erratic roared. "We are legion! What you call your soul is nothing but a confusion, an inability! A plurality that cannot count the moments that divide it and so calls itself One. Only when memory is stripped away! Only then is being revealed as pure Becoming! Only when the past dies can we shrug aside the burden that is our soul! Only then does Darkness sing untrammeled! Only then!"
A: And yet you seek memories!
N: To be! Being is not a choice!
A: But you claim Being is deception!
N: Yes!
A: But that is nonsense! Madness!
N: That is Becoming
N: What just happened? Wh-what just..."
A: You found Glory
The Nonman compares this to a child recovering his mother's womb. So a division in the Nonman soul is in some sense born separate from the prior incarnation? Cleric's soul has the DNA of Nil'giccas' soul, but is like a wee 'lil child soul!!??? Yet, the total Nonman soul is aware of it's division (alluded to at the top of this post).Some afterbirth still remains. And on occasion, speaks.
How could a proper Elju function w/o a small understanding of Nonmen consciousness?
Is it as simple as understanding how to use memory fulcrums?
If so, how would Kosoter have known how to manipulate Cleric by using Akka and Mimara as memory fulcrums?
Is it knowledge the Zaudyani Captain would have had just from his life experience? Can it be random chance?
Did someone (Kelhus), teach him? How does Kosoter become in possession of Cleric anyways...
hmm, an oddball interpretation could be that Nonmen reincarnate souls onto themselves, in order to preserve an intact persona (Being) so that they can pursue Becoming (absorbed by Oblivion?).
"So..." the Nonman King said, raising eyes savage for their mirth. "You offer me oblivion?"
Too late the old Wizard recognized his mistake.
"No... I-"
The Nonman whirled, grasped him with a strength that made the Wizard feel bone thin, bone frail. "I will not die a husk!" he cried. He rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder in his curious, mad and explosive way. He flung out his hands to clutch the air.
"No! I will ruin and I will break!"
Your appeals only incite me! You will die and I will remember! Because all you do is reach for the love I bear you!"
"No! I will not strike you!"
The face of Nil'giccas resolved from the dwindling glare. The setting sun rimmed his scalp with sickles of gold. "I remember... I remember your name..."
Light filled his howling mouth-blasphemous meaning...
At long last the Wizard struck
I wonder at the This is where I die comment, (followed by an assertion that he is nil giccis now) could nonmen see all three directions? Past present and future? Is that becoming? Is that why their statues/art are always in three phases of time?
Here's a bizarre question. is the grafting of Bashrag (three fold, three arms, three legs etc) a crude attempt by the inchoroi to imitate nonmen art?
Ah but Cleric/NG has conditioned achamian and mimara to accept him--nilgiccis--into their bodies--which they promptly do (which would explain why C/NG dumped the qirri to force them to burn him and accept him inside them. perhaps bakker's Lembas-melage-dust has it's perils (for humans) and profits (for nonmen)...
Death went swirling up, afterall, when they made the C/NG qirri.
How could a proper Elju function w/o a small understanding of Nonmen consciousness? Is it as simple as understanding how to use memory fulcrums? If so, how would Kosoter have known how to manipulate Cleric by using Akka and Mimara as memory fulcrums? Is it knowledge the Zaudyani Captain would have had just from his life experience? Can it be random chance? Did someone (Kelhus), teach him? How does Kosoter become in possession of Cleric anyways...
QuoteOnly when memory is stripped away! Only then is being revealed as pure Becoming! Only when the past dies can we shrug aside the burden that is our soul!
What is Nil'giccas' aim here? What will he gain by shedding his soul and Becoming? Surely Nilgiccas knows... Do y'all? I have an idea, but I'd like to hear your thoughts. Also, does he fail in Becoming? He asks Akka WTF just happened as he lies impaled?
QuoteN: "So... You offer me oblivion?" "No, I will ruin and I will break." "Honour?" "Love? What are these but dross before oblivion? No! I will seize the world and I will shake from it what misery, what anguish, I can. I will remember!"
Fairly straight forward so far. The Nonman claiming Nil'giccas is dead can be seen as Nil'giccas being an erratic, etc... Akka realizes he can't be the Nonman's book, he and Mimara are to be the memory fulcrum.
Cleric (at the very least), knows who the father is. He must (?), want them saved so he can remember them later.
Anyways, after a bunch of Mimara POV's and the end of the Dragon fight. The Nonman empties his pouch of Qirri! The motive for that is interesting but another topic... unless it's not.
QuoteN: Nil'giccas! you call-beseech! as if trying to awaken some truth slumbering within me. You think Nil'giccas is something I have lost! And therefore something I can recover! You forget, that before the Nonman King's passing, I did not exist! I can no more recover him than you can recover your mother's virgin womb. I am Incariol! Cleric! And you shall not survive my lesson! You think the cripple! You think Cleric the ruin of someone whole! But you are wrong, Seswatha! I am the Truth! "We are many!" the Erratic roared. "We are legion! What you call your soul is nothing but a confusion, an inability! A plurality that cannot count the moments that divide it and so calls itself One. Only when memory is stripped away! Only then is being revealed as pure Becoming! Only when the past dies can we shrug aside the burden that is our soul! Only then does Darkness sing untrammeled! Only then!"
The Nonman goes on to explain the divisions in the soul and that Cleric can not (somehow), access Nil'giccas. The Nonman compares this to a child recovering his mother's womb. So a division in the Nonman soul is in some sense born separate from the prior incarnation? Cleric's soul has the DNA of Nil'giccas' soul, but is like a wee 'lil child soul!!??? Yet, the total Nonman soul is aware of it's division (alluded to at the top of this post).
To answer how Kosoter did what he did, I tend to mark it all down as Kellhus manipulation. The guy is a complete fanatic, and he tells us he has explicit instruction from Kellhus to keep Mimara alive. He obviously had some dealing with Kell, and is therefore under his influence. Also, there is no way that the Skin-Eaters just happened to find the most powerful Quya wandering around in the woods. And it didnt just happen that Akka picked the one band of scalpers that had a Nonman. Kellhus manipulated a large portion of that story, and Kosoter more than anything else.
Is it possible Nil'giccas wasn't ready to actually kill Akka until that very moment of memory? Does remembering his actual name add weight to remembering the betrayal? He says "I will remember," then DOES actually remember the moment Akka refuses to strike (professes his love one MOAR time... Finally tipping the scales), and begins to lash out at Achamian. Have I lost the plot guys\gals? I kinda think I have.
Ah but Cleric/NG has conditioned achamian and mimara to accept him--nilgiccis--into their bodies--which they promptly do (which would explain why C/NG dumped the qirri to force them to burn him and accept him inside them. perhaps bakker's Lembas-melage-dust has it's perils (for humans) and profits (for nonmen)...
Death went swirling up, afterall, when they made the C/NG qirri.
Hmmmmm...
I'm willing to be lead somewhere if your willing to show the way. Whatever the benefits are, they can't in anyway prevent Damnation... or Nonmen would never have gone over to the Consult.
I think we're ignoring some fairly obvious intentions - this seems to reflect the Erratic's great act of trauma and, to me, it seems obvious that Cleric cannot kill Achamian until he remembers Seswatha.
You'll have some of my thoughts in that other thread. However, in light of discussion here, I might hazard the alternative that trying to remember Nil'giccas and the acts Cleric must do, to do so, just isn't fun. Memories are a big thing here, and while I support lockesnow's assertion that we should consider Earwan reality, rather than our own (metaphysical consequences of the mundane, etc), we might first analogize towards degenerations akin to Alzheimer's; stranded in a perpetual now.
Ah but Cleric/NG has conditioned achamian and mimara to accept him--nilgiccis--into their bodies--which they promptly do (which would explain why C/NG dumped the qirri to force them to burn him and accept him inside them. perhaps bakker's Lembas-melage-dust has it's perils (for humans) and profits (for nonmen)...
Death went swirling up, afterall, when they made the C/NG qirri.
Hmmmmm...
I'm willing to be lead somewhere if your willing to show the way. Whatever the benefits are, they can't in anyway prevent Damnation... or Nonmen would never have gone over to the Consult.
Makes me wonder if RSB is struggling with conveying all the info in the allotted pages the publisher will allow... These books are damn short in comparison to the page counts of some authors which sell more. This book is never coming out.
Perhaps the non-man just doesn't have any choice about 'birth' - that is what 'becoming' is like. To beget, without choice. He can only make his nest.
Before this thread, I had assumed that elju's were a sort of simple thing-
QuoteBefore this thread, I had assumed that elju's were a sort of simple thing-
Some of us have been here too long. No simple explanations are acceptable at this point. We need complexity to give life breadth, to save us from it's knife's edge.
Lol - I think we are a happy correspondence of cause. If he was only writing for us, he wouldn't be making any money.
Again - people who discuss books online are a small percentage of book-buyers.
Who would the princess be?
Lost my patience while reading topics & finally registered for some comments! Actually, one comment for now, about "elju technology". I tried hard to stick to the explanation which also corresponds with ideas and themes already mentioned in both trilogies.
1. Guys and girls, there is no book without structure, without formal table of content, right? And every book appears rather through text destruction than it's creation. So we should be very careful with comprehending "book" as a blunt object and denying it all properties of a subtle process, otherwise we will blind ourselves to the certain ideas and guesses.
2. Incariol was kinda direct about nonman personal integrity — there is no such thing anymore. Also, "Four Revelations of Cinial'jin" shows us a river of images instead of a personal dialogue. So for me it always looked like nonman can (and will) memorize everything he experiences through the countless ages, but at the same time will gradually lose every control over both old and new memories. A dark undercellar of his mind is totally fine, it's large enough to keep all that heroical, dull an villanous deeds even for hundreds of thousands of years. But a candle of nonman's mind to light that enormous and growing dark space... Let's just say it's a dim one and it will never get brighter.
3. We already saw an example of a conditioned mind and I mean that awesome probability trance. Practically, it's a pocket analytical department with IT-grade tools but for a cheap price of a timely and proper education.
So, here's an idea (as an intersection of all these three paragraphs).
What if "elju" is just a conditioned passerby, who do not possesses even a bit of nonman's real and personal history, but who somehow can enchance nonman's cognitive process in a specific way through simple or complex technique? So the "book" (human, sranc, etc as a companion to nonman) appears when "text" (nonman's memory) is cut in a specific way by an editor (nonman and his companion). Of course, there remains a question about who defines that specific way...
I stand for "no one" as an answer. And that's why i have a sinister shivers here, lol. Just imagine a rotting, colossal, self-encumbered, unstable, dying something in an every nonman's psyche, which sometime conditions passerby humans or even srancs to recollect it as a something new and lesser, but stable and viable. Maybe after all the inchoroi and their circumspect creations are twice less ghastly then their accidental ones.
It brings me back around to wondering how the Inchoroi -- who are at least a little bit older than the Nonman, though they imply they're actually much older and that would make sense -- have managed to remain "intact" for so long. I suspect it is, like most things, through the Tekne.Almost certainly. The problem of potentially infinite memory vs. finite storage capacity and read/write speed is something the Inchoroi would have encountered very soon after cracking the secret of clinical immortality. The Inchoroi must have been able to adjust for this with augments to their mental abilities. Their mastery of the Tekne was once very great indeed, and I'm sure Aurang and Aurax both have memory and intellect far superior to any human via mind enhancing grafts.
"Ah, the raucous glory of that age! He had been young then, before the accretions of graft after graft had sapped his monumental frame. And such a contest! But for Sil's impatience, he and his brothers, would have won, and all this--this world--would be moot."
"Mandate Schoolmen claim to relive Seswatha's life, but this is only partially true. In fact, we dream only portions, the long trauma of the First Apocalypse. All we dream is the spectacle. 'Seswathat,' the old Mandate joke goes, 'does not shit.' The banalities--the substance of his life--is missing ... The truth of his life is missing."
I guess Aurang could have been born shortly before Arkfall?That's how I interpret it. I believe new Inchoroi were being born all the way up to the Arkfall, and the destruction of the (living parts of the) Ark was the very thing that removed their ability to procreate, because the machinery of the Ark was by this time what made new Inchoroi instead of sexual reproduction between individual.
Seswatha kind of making Mandati into nonmen--only trauma and suffering remembered. Not like Cleric, but like a long-lived member of the Intact?There's a big potential quandary there. The difficulties of the Nonmen regarding their memories, and the successes of the Tekne prior to the Inchoroi's arrival on Earwa, imply that the Tekne's assertion (in their world and ours) that life is fundamnetally mechanical is true in this universe. With drugs and genetic modifications it's possible to enhance intellect or memory by acting on the hardware of the brain.
Aurang's age bugs me because I think of him as like 100,000 years old but then there's this quote from Aurang's POV in TTT US paperback 224, referring to the Cuno-Inchoroi Wars:That is a powerful quote, I think. A lot in there. Sil's impatience?Quote"Ah, the raucous glory of that age! He had been young then, before the accretions of graft after graft had sapped his monumental frame. And such a contest! But for Sil's impatience, he and his brothers, would have won, and all this--this world--would be moot."
Lost my patience while reading topics & finally registered for some comments! Actually, one comment for now, about "elju technology". I tried hard to stick to the explanation which also corresponds with ideas and themes already mentioned in both trilogies.Thanks for the explanation rsb, I hadn't thought about the structure of a book being key to unlocking the elju metaphor.
1. Guys and girls, there is no book without structure, without formal table of content, right? And every book appears rather through text destruction than it's creation. So we should be very careful with comprehending "book" as a blunt object and denying it all properties of a subtle process, otherwise we will blind ourselves to the certain ideas and guesses.
2. Incariol was kinda direct about nonman personal integrity — there is no such thing anymore. Also, "Four Revelations of Cinial'jin" shows us a river of images instead of a personal dialogue. So for me it always looked like nonman can (and will) memorize everything he experiences through the countless ages, but at the same time will gradually lose every control over both old and new memories. A dark undercellar of his mind is totally fine, it's large enough to keep all that heroical, dull an villanous deeds even for hundreds of thousands of years. But a candle of nonman's mind to light that enormous and growing dark space... Let's just say it's a dim one and it will never get brighter.
3. We already saw an example of a conditioned mind and I mean that awesome probability trance. Practically, it's a pocket analytical department with IT-grade tools but for a cheap price of a timely and proper education.
So, here's an idea (as an intersection of all these three paragraphs).
What if "elju" is just a conditioned passerby, who do not possesses even a bit of nonman's real and personal history, but who somehow can enchance nonman's cognitive process in a specific way through simple or complex technique? So the "book" (human, sranc, etc as a companion to nonman) appears when "text" (nonman's memory) is cut in a specific way by an editor (nonman and his companion). Of course, there remains a question about who defines that specific way...
I stand for "no one" as an answer. And that's why i have a sinister shivers here, lol. Just imagine a rotting, colossal, self-encumbered, unstable, dying something in an every nonman's psyche, which sometime conditions passerby humans or even srancs to recollect it as a something new and lesser, but stable and viable. Maybe after all the inchoroi and their circumspect creations are twice less ghastly then their accidental ones.
Wathi dolls seem to be souls without intellect, Skin-Spies, Sranc, Bashrag, and Wracu are intellects without souls, and Shauriatas is a soul and intellect without body.Yeah but not exactly what I was driving at. Not sure I can explain it adequately, not your fault :P.
Wathi dolls seem to be souls without intellect, Skin-Spies, Sranc, Bashrag, and Wracu are intellects without souls, and Shauriatas is a soul and intellect without body.Yeah but not exactly what I was driving at. Not sure I can explain it adequately, not your fault :P.
I will say though that the Wathi doll seemed to have intellect (setting a trap for the cat to ride it to Akka), and Shauriatas has 5 bodies.
just a really convenient way to pass on knowledge and safeguard secrets. I wonder if the Mangaecca have looked into it?Agreed. Sorcery turns on meaning. Why not pass along the best sorcerers direction via mind-meld, I mean grasping, rather than wasting years studying it each generation.
just a really convenient way to pass on knowledge and safeguard secrets. I wonder if the Mangaecca have looked into it?Agreed. Sorcery turns on meaning. Why not pass along the best sorcerers direction via mind-meld, I mean grasping, rather than wasting years studying it each generation.