What is the No God?

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« Reply #15 on: June 01, 2013, 06:49:27 pm »
Quote from: Octavian
Quote from: Jorge
I pretty much assumed the No-God was the culmination of Tekne/sorcery fusion which was necessary for the Inchoroi to begin shutting the World against the Outsid

This.

The No God is most certainly something that was in part cooked up by the Grandmaster of the Mengecca and the Non Men in order to help shut the world to the outside. Wutteat stated that the Inchoroi would fall on worlds in crazy numbers to kill off the population. The No God was not used before Earwa.

I'm think Golden Room = Wells of the Aborted + Sorcery + The Tekne = No God.

It had some form of body because the Consult are said to have carried it from the field and its death caused some type of plague to spread. Also, Kellhus had a vision of something that he believed to be the No God, but i don't have books on hand to describe it.

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« Reply #16 on: June 01, 2013, 06:49:32 pm »
Quote from: sciborg2
What's also interesting is that Scylvendi beliefs are based on the idea that their god, Lokung, was killed by the rest of humanity.

Lokung, IIRC, is the No God.

So what exactly did they believe before the No God was killed by the Heron Spear? And why did they ally with the Consult + Inchie Bros?

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« Reply #17 on: June 01, 2013, 06:49:40 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
I once speculated that Swazond are a soul trapping device.  Seriously, reread the passage on swazond and then reread the passage in the next book where it is empthatically reiterated virtually word for word by a different character. I'm pretty certain it's hugely fucking important.

Anyway, I speculated that Swazond are a soul trapping device and this might explain why they allied with the Consult. 

My theory is that because Scylvendi men carry around extra souls on their swazond, when the NoGod caused planet wide still births the Scylvendi were immune because of their swazond.  Because the souls attached to the swazond had never traveled to the outside, they were still inward.  Thus when a baby was ensouled, the connection that would normally form to the outside, instead evolved/adapted by forming to one of the spare souls carried by the father. 

Thus the Scylvendi never experienced the still births that united all the other kingdoms and empires of the world, in fact, their immunity would be a reason to ally themselves with the Consult.

I had not considered before that The God LoKung was killed/captured by the Consult and transformed into the No-god, I just assumed that they took the no-god as their god.  But it seems sort of self-evident that their god/ciphrang may very well be the entity that was inside the carapace, and that is why they continued to worship him.

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« Reply #18 on: June 01, 2013, 06:49:48 pm »
Quote from: sciborg2
Awesome theories. Not sure about the Swazond == soul trap. You do raise good questions regarding the Scylvendi and whether they continued to have babies even after the No-God arose.

Oh, also, from False Sun, might support AI idea:

"A power that could be crafted and shaped, that could be applied to its own proliferation, and so accelerate, radiating out across the span of need and desire. A power that could uproot cities and hurl them across the Void.

The Tekne.

Mechanism. Only mechanism could save their Voices."


Can the No-God apprehend Paradox?

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« Reply #19 on: June 01, 2013, 06:49:55 pm »
Quote from: The Sharmat
Quote from: Octavian
The No God is most certainly something that was in part cooked up by the Grandmaster of the Mengecca and the Non Men in order to help shut the world to the outside. Wutteat stated that the Inchoroi would fall on worlds in crazy numbers to kill off the population. The No God was not used before Earwa.

I'm think Golden Room = Wells of the Aborted + Sorcery + The Tekne = No God.
Only partially cooked up by the non-alien members of the Consult I think. There are also references to Shauriatas "Re-discovering" the method to end damnation, which is presumably the No-God.

Guessing that the Inchoroi themselves originally conceived of the No-God, but simply couldn't make it work until sorcery was discovered. The plans/prototypes/whatever may have lain dormant completely forgotten by the twins until the Maengaecca moved in.

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« Reply #20 on: June 01, 2013, 06:50:03 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
Well, the inchies had been enacting their 144k plan on other planets and seemed confident it would would work as long as the planet was the promised land... The no-god seems like an addition or extension of this.  I think it may have been prompted by some buried and forbidden research by ancient quya.

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« Reply #21 on: June 01, 2013, 06:50:10 pm »
Quote from: Jorge
Quote
The God LoKung was killed/captured by the Consult and transformed into the No-god

I like this idea. There isn't much textual support, but it kind of makes sense. The idea of Swazond as some kind of soul-trapping ritual is interesting and somewhat supported by things that Cnaiur says and thinks about.

If Ciphrang/Gods can draw souls towards themselves, then they would be an ideal "core" for the Whirlwind...

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« Reply #22 on: June 01, 2013, 06:50:18 pm »
Quote from: The Sharmat
Pretty sure "Lokung" was alive until it was hit by a directed energy weapon at Mengedda. Just seems simpler to me.

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« Reply #23 on: June 01, 2013, 06:50:25 pm »
Quote from: Madness
Agreed. I'm pretty sure the Scylvendi made a covenant with a living "Lokung" or the No-God.

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« Reply #24 on: June 01, 2013, 06:50:35 pm »
Quote from: Soterion
Quote from: sciborg2
Past ideas:

1. An AI
2. A collection of souls
3. A break between the watcher and watched
4. Some kind of singularity, similar to 3.
5. Someone from Earwa's past.

Also, why did the No God have to take the field? Why couldn't they have just sent it across the ocean and let the still borns pile up until the Inside was closed.

eta: added theory mentioned below
I don't necessarily have anything to add to the great collection of specific details that posters have gathered here in order to determine what the No-God is in the context of the narrative; but conceptually, I think some awesome ideas have been stated.

I love this idea of the No-God being a singularity of sorts, although I would also lump artificial intelligence into that category.  It's my opinion that the No-God has lost any sense of the Cartesian cogito, or a kind of subjective awareness that we typically associate with cognition.  But, as Hegel has been so kind to show us, the void and the infinite are two sides of the same coin.

I think the No-God has to ask "What do you see?" because it cannot conceive of itself within the logic of a subject constituted by its limits (one of which is language).  In this sense, I see the No-God as a strong Hegelian type of image: a negation of a negation of sorts, the culmination of technological development of the Inchoroi, but also the annihilation of meaning since this development has exceeded its own limitations.

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« Reply #25 on: June 01, 2013, 06:50:44 pm »
Quote from: anor277
I don't mean to carp or criticize but the comparison of the No-God to a singularity (whatever that is) or an AI or a strong Hegelian image (whatever that is) is all pretty hard to fathom.

The No-God was probably not a singularity as he was deactivated by a laser (the which would have no effect on a singularity).  The idea that the No-God was a soul trapper has already been developed in the novels (and no I don't know what a soul is either).

One nice historical parallel in the novels was the Scylvendi's identification of the Ketyai (and the Cenei and Nansur empires) as 'God-Killers'; the Scylvendi were the Christians to the Ketyai Jews, and warfare avenged Ketyai blood-guilt.

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« Reply #26 on: June 01, 2013, 06:50:52 pm »
Quote from: sciborg2
I mean singularity more as a way to sum up "breaking the rules of the world" or "taking the rules to an extreme".

So whatever qualities we could use to categorize/measure topoii, times infinity.

ETA: I do wonder, if paradox leads to consciousness and consciousness is the God, what makes the No-God what it is?

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« Reply #27 on: June 01, 2013, 06:50:59 pm »
Quote from: Soterion
I agree for the most part with that conception of singularity.

Is God consciousness?  I admit to having forgotten, unfortunately, many of the specific details of the books (one of the reasons I registered on this forum); is this something from the context of the novels?  Or a separate theological type of equation?

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« Reply #28 on: June 01, 2013, 06:51:08 pm »
Quote from: Madness
God, the - In Inrithi tradition, the unitary, omniscient, omnipotent, and immanent being responsible for existence ... In the Fanim tradition, the God is unitary, omniscient, omnipotent, and transcendent being responsible for existence (thus the "Solitary God"), against which the Gods war for the hearts of men. (p. 445, TTT LE)

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« Reply #29 on: June 01, 2013, 06:51:19 pm »
Quote from: sciborg2
Quote
Is God consciousness?

Well, Kellhus tells Akka that people are the very God they would worship, souls mean you can apprehend paradox (from WLW), and Akka tells Cnauir that human souls are holes between the Inside and Outside.

Now, I believe that Scott is taking the idea that consciousness at least relates to the soul, and the connection between paradox and the soul+God seems to explain Mimara's apprehension of God via the Chorae.

eta: quote, also:

What's strange is that there seems something "paradoxical" about the No-God, as if it too were a living contradiction. However, we know the Carapace requires Chorae to protect it from sorcery. Why I'd refer to the No-God as some kind of soul-singularity, especially as it relates to the Tekne which isn't language dependent.