I'd argue that they're most of the way towards being a new hominid species actually. They demonstrate more genetic incompatibility with Homo sapiens than a lot of other organisms considered separate species show for each other.
And Moenghus, yes.I'd argue that they're most of the way towards being a new hominid species actually. They demonstrate more genetic incompatibility with Homo sapiens than a lot of other organisms considered separate species show for each other.
You are referring to all of Kellhus' other... attempted baby mommas who all died/failed to produce offspring?
I'd argue that they're most of the way towards being a new hominid species actually. They demonstrate more genetic incompatibility with Homo sapiens than a lot of other organisms considered separate species show for each other.
You are referring to all of Kellhus' other... attempted baby mommas who all died/failed to produce offspring?
Interesting, though I still think at least initially that the word came from Dúnedain.This was my thought as well. Kellhus is a terrible twisted version of Aragorn, in a way.
Solitary God = Absolute.Wouldn't it be more correct to say the Fanim have been worshiping the Dunyain conception of the Absolute inadvertently? The Dunyain are older than the Fanim.
The Dûnyain have been inadvertently worshiping the Fanim God all along.
And Moenghus, yes.Cnaiur's mother must have been a truly rare woman. Moenghus fathered a seemingly healthy son by her, though he was long gone by the time it was born, and likely didn't even know she was pregnant. Of course then Cnaiur's mother and the child were killed for being contaminated by Moenghus.
How about the Dunyain are keepers of the Kelmomian prophecy? Set us to ensure both the survival of the Anasaurimbor line and that the harbinger of the Second Apocalypse would be capable in every way possible. This brings up an interesting question: why was Moenghus exiled to begin with??
We don't even know if moe was exiled to begin with.
Agreed, but perhaps a conversation to continue in MiaLLWL thread ;).
First, why did the Dunyain lie to their antecedants about sorcery when they surely knew it was around and not a lie?1) If there are any Cants to detect Marks on a long-range distance, using sorcery is a dangerous thing for a cult, trying to hide from the world gone mad. Risk of detection can outweight the powers of the sorcery.
woah that's cool -- so Mek was strolling about his garden when he ran into Kellhus? i could see something like this happening, he would be able to spy on them from a distance, perhaps direct a clan of sranc to the right place whenever he wanted them to send one of their own into the worldHe's a Quya, so there is always a possibility for consealment cants and a very close touch. Also Ishual bastion may be a backdoor of a cunuroi mansionette and thus from cunuroi perspective - a nice roof garden.
All of the possibilities you lay out for explaining the Dunyain omission of the reality of Sorcery suggests a sort of carelessness I'm unlikely to attribute to the Dunyain.Not carelessness, just fallibility. I doubt they are error-free people even with their 2000-yeas gym of social and physical exercises. Btw, it's a most cruel problem of every fallible culture, who recognized such drawback and are trying to perfect itself. Before, it's limited only by ignorance. After, the new limit is about sacrificing a great deal for the sake of awareness. Total fallibility hardly changes, but the price of conclusive error is rising.
because the Dunyain teach a way of thinking which endlessly revises metaphysical and core truths such as the reality of sin and damnation, the simple existence of hell and 'the Mark', the hidden nature of the onta..These monks will be lucky if sorcery is closer to the root of reality than to reality's redundance.
The Dunyain today could be as ignorant of the Darkness that came before them, even as they were the ones that created it.
They don't seek to grasp what comes before so much as to be removed from it entirely.I disagree. In order to come before all, they must grasp all that came before them.
This makes more sense to me. I could accept this as a possibility.The Dunyain today could be as ignorant of the Darkness that came before them, even as they were the ones that created it.
This is why I believe the Celmomian Prophecy could be a Dunyain plot, the beginning of an attempt to reach beyond the Empirical Priority Principle and produce a "self-moving soul". This explains how the Dunyain came to find Ishual - the hidden fastness of the Anasurimbor line - as either Celmomas or Seswatha or both would have been involved.
The proximity of the establishing of the Dunyain and the first apocalypse also makes it unlikely that they simply didn't know about sorcery, and their founding principles suggest that they would only omit the existence of sorcery intentionally, an omission which on the surface seems to contradict their mission of grasping all that comes before.They certainly knew of sorcery, but destroyed all records of it. Perhaps, yes, they planned to rediscover it later when the other, more mundane principles had been conquered.
@Simas:
All of the possibilities you lay out for explaining the Dunyain omission of the reality of Sorcery suggests a sort of carelessness I'm unlikely to attribute to the Dunyain. When Kellhus discovers Sorcery he begins to question everything the Dunyain have taught him, because the Dunyain teach a way of thinking which endlessly revises metaphysical and core truths such as the reality of sin and damnation, the simple existence of hell and 'the Mark', the hidden nature of the onta.
It seems far more likely that the Dunyain were created to produce a single event that would change the course of the world: the creation of the event that is Anasurimbor Kellhus, "a soul utterly transparent to the Logos", a soul which lay outside of the cycle of causation like the Logos which could account for all that preceeded.
Like Kellhus is also a White-Luck Warrior.
Perhaps, yes, they planned to rediscover it later when the other, more mundane principles had been conquered.I like this idea, Wilshire. It somehow sticks with that overall duniyain image of calm & long-term designers.
That's fine. You can reasonably argue this is a flaw in Dunyain philosophy. Nonetheless, it appears to be the route they took. Unless we assume a vast ancient Dunyain conspiracy that neither Kellhus and Moenghus were privy to in the least and never even speculated about.They don't seek to grasp what comes before so much as to be removed from it entirely.I disagree. In order to come before all, they must grasp all that came before them.
The goal of Dunyain philosophy is a manipulation of the self, that it becomes capable of moving through the world purely under it's own volition. Manipulation of circumstance is a secondary effect, and a lust for power the way Man would consider it isn't a quality they seem to have.
Remember how surprised Kell was to see how mundane people wore a second face, lying to themselves. He wasn't really expecting this particular set of circumstances, but seized on it with the full weight of his focus and perception.
Seizing with the full weight of his focus and perception indicates a profound and bone deep lust for power kellhus is apparently blind to in himself.IIRC, he surmised that the only way to get to his father, who had been in the World for 30 years and held untold power, was to wield the Holy War. Not until the visions on the circumfix did he truly seek to control the Three Seas (which is arguably towards a goal we are unaware of, so again not necessarily about power).
Which becomes pretty explicit when kellhus gazes on the nansurium and decides he's going to seize the whole world. His lust for power far outstrips conphas or any other character.
I think you're right with that. Like you said, he never actually says that he wants to kill his father until later in the book... So maybe he's a bit human, but still mostly Dunyain for the majority of PoN.I think Kellhus is more human than he cares to admit, but not for that particular reason. I mean, is a Dunyain at all trustworthy, even to other Dunyain? Once one is removed from the Pragma's power and observation...why should any Dunyain do what they say?
Just because he's deceived by his own rationalizations doesn't make his uncontrollable lust for power go away.Seizing with the full weight of his focus and perception indicates a profound and bone deep lust for power kellhus is apparently blind to in himself.IIRC, he surmised that the only way to get to his father, who had been in the World for 30 years and held untold power, was to wield the Holy War. Not until the visions on the circumfix did he truly seek to control the Three Seas (which is arguably towards a goal we are unaware of, so again not necessarily about power).
Which becomes pretty explicit when kellhus gazes on the nansurium and decides he's going to seize the whole world. His lust for power far outstrips conphas or any other character.
I find your utter hatred for Kellhus refreshing in a board of ZaudunyaniWhoa, shots fired.
Kellhus is a broken Dunyain. He's not human, but I also don't think I'd characterize him as a Sranc for souls.This.
Is there any soul he encounters he doesn't agressively preemptively attempt to rape upon the instant of meeting?His kids.
Why does he believe he is entitled to do it? Being smarter doesn't make him above consent, he just seizes and violates upon the moment of first meeting, he's basically got a permanent sranc erection of the metaphysical variety, constantly penetrating, trying to slake his unquenchable lust, and failing.You're forgetting the most terrible thing about a Dunyain. He takes nothing. He makes them consent.
Seems to me like you are suggesting some kind of objective pedestal one might sit upon and always be in the right when laying down judgments.If that is what I'm doing, and there is one, then I am right. If that is what I'm doing, and I'm wrong, then technically it is not objectively wrong for me to lay down subjective moral judgements and treat them as objective, is it?
Was moreso directed at locke, but yes I agree.Seems to me like you are suggesting some kind of objective pedestal one might sit upon and always be in the right when laying down judgments.If that is what I'm doing, and there is one, then I am right. If that is what I'm doing, and I'm wrong, then technically it is not objectively wrong for me to lay down subjective moral judgements and treat them as objective, is it?
Of course then that boils down the entire argument to "Kellhus bad. Kellhus make me feel icky to read."
If you were the world's only adult and all others were toddlers, would you not seek to guide them? Impose order on the chaos they would naturally create? would you not seek to Come Before Them?Certainly something that could be argued.
She really wanted it! Even liked it at the end!Is there any soul he encounters he doesn't agressively preemptively attempt to rape upon the instant of meeting?His kids.Why does he believe he is entitled to do it? Being smarter doesn't make him above consent, he just seizes and violates upon the moment of first meeting, he's basically got a permanent sranc erection of the metaphysical variety, constantly penetrating, trying to slake his unquenchable lust, and failing.You're forgetting the most terrible thing about a Dunyain. He takes nothing. He makes them consent.
Is that not consent? This isn't even going into Cants of Compulsion. All Kellhus does is communicate information. Some of which is lies. But more often he ensnares with glimpses of truth.
I can't believe I'm defending Kellhus.
She really wanted it! Even liked it at the end!Usually said as a defense in cases where the victim made their refusal quite clear and continued to do so long afterwards. This is more like a woman crying rape because she voluntarily slept with a dude that claimed to be an astronaut and then got mad when she later found out he was lying. That makes the guy in question scummy,but it doesn't make him a rapist.
(How do we know these aren't merely kellhus' excuses and self flattering justifications and rationalizations?)Because we have read the thoughts of his worshipers. They're weeping for gratitude, generally.
In other words just because kellhus can rationalize his actions to himself doesn't mean his rationalizations have any more credence than the same rationalization used by the bard.Sure. And Kellhus likes power. I just think you're emphasizing the wrong character beats a bit.
The presence of such rationalizations merely indicates the depth and breadth of kellhus self deception, and it's there from the beginning.
His ignorance of his self is breathtaking.
Thats quite the emotional appeal.
She really wanted it! Even liked it at the end!
(How do we know these aren't merely kellhus' excuses and self flattering justifications and rationalizations?)
In other words just because kellhus can rationalize his actions to himself doesn't mean his rationalizations have any more credence than the same rationalization used by the bard.
The presence of such rationalizations merely indicates the depth and breadth of kellhus self deception, and it's there from the beginning.
His ignorance of his self is breathtaking.
His ignorance of his self is breathtaking.He's just as easily in 100% control and understanding of himself as he is in ignorance. More words without his POV than with, why are you so certain you are correct.
Why are you so resistant to applying kellhusian analysis methods to kellhus?That was a question directed at yourself, right? Seems to me like your analysis is based entirely on emotional rhetoric rather than any kind of intellectual dissection.
He's just as easily in 100% control and understanding of himself as he is in ignorance.I dispute this but my arguments all rely on stuff from the first trilogy so if he somehow became a literal God in the 20 year interim where we have nothing from his POV I wouldn't know it.
I dispute this but my arguments all rely on stuff from the first trilogy so if he somehow became a literal God in the 20 year interim where we have nothing from his POV I wouldn't know it.Please, dispute away. He has some blindspots, certainly. My point being that saying he is 100% evil is just as valid as saying he is 100% perfect.
Being smarter doesn't make him above consent, he just seizes and violates upon the moment of first meeting, he's basically got a permanent sranc erection of the metaphysical variety, constantly penetrating, trying to slake his unquenchable lust, and failing.Almost certainly I'm going to regret this, but... Consent is a concept and thus born of necessity. Dunno if dunyain have overgrown it, but modern rapist are certainly not.
Look at kellhus' rapist/pedophile rationalization for raping Leweth's soul. Leweth was like a child and could be controlled, so kellhus exalted in controlling for controls sake, Leweth was asking for it, so to speak, Leweth "liked" it in the end, kellhus was smarter/more mature/stronger/better so he was entitled to Leweth's soul because of those things, Leweth's consent was irrelevant to kellhus slaying his unquenchable desires. And of course kellhus eventually hunts down Leweth's soul and rapes it the way the bard hunted down the bastard and raped him a few pages earlier.
But kellhus rationalized away all his crimes, his motivations, his emotions, dismissing them by claiming he was above them.
Interesting, though I still think at least initially that the word came from Dúnedain.
As some know I think Kellhus is attempting to free Men from their damnation - part of this involves him attaining the Absolute. Kellhus becoming the Absolute is a secondary goal for him now (IMO) and has been since he broke on the circumfux.Seems like the shortest path to that would be siding with the Consult and aiding in the rebirth and triumph of the No-God.
As some know I think Kellhus is attempting to free Men from their damnation - part of this involves him attaining the Absolute. Kellhus becoming the Absolute is a secondary goal for him now (IMO) and has been since he broke on the circumfux.Seems like the shortest path to that would be siding with the Consult and aiding in the rebirth and triumph of the No-God.
Any crimes committed by Kellhus after the events in TTT we can assume are done with the greater plan of ridding the world of the Consult and Inchoroi in mind.Can we? I really have no idea.
Not all actions are equal in Earwa. We need Mimara to see Kellhus with the Judging Eye to truly know if Kellhus is objectively holy or insane (being one might mean being the other, too, that won't be so easy to find out).Even if we did see that, is Kellhus immoral or moral because he's damned/not damned? Just because the Outside apparently thinks so, do we have to think the same?
We need Mimara to see Kellhus with the Judging Eye to truly know if Kellhus is objectively holy or insane (being one might mean being the other, too, that won't be so easy to find out).
Because the Outside is mad.
Any crimes committed by Kellhus after the events in TTT we can assume are done with the greater plan of ridding the world of the Consult and Inchoroi in mind.How does this mesh with the belief Kellhus professes in TTT that the No-God is somehow speaking to him?
Because the Outside is mad.
As measured by what, if not itself or the Inside, which the Outside is already measuring?
Why does the Outside get to measure the Inside using its own standards, but the Inside doesn't get to judge the Outside?
Something something birth is the battlefield of women ancient misogyny something somethinglmao.
Who can say? Gilgaol is taken for patron by the warrior castes of Earwa, and Yatwerian theology condemns them as "Takers".
But does Yatwer really feel that way? And how can something that had no parents have siblings? How much of anything that people in the Three Seas have to say about the nature of the agencies of the Outside is true at all?
Well if we're being serious, I don't think anything actually explicitly states the White-Luck Warrior belongs to Yatwer. This White-Luck Warrior does, though. There's no reason to think Gilgaol couldn't make one, if he wanted, I suppose.
As to what Gilgaol has to do with Yatwer and her pawns...allegedly, Gilgaol is Yatwer's brother. And Birth and War are the two most popular of the Gods.
Any crimes committed by Kellhus after the events in TTT we can assume are done with the greater plan of ridding the world of the Consult and Inchoroi in mind.How does this mesh with the belief Kellhus professes in TTT that the No-God is somehow speaking to him?
Why does the Outside get to measure the Inside using its own standards, but the Inside doesn't get to judge the Outside?
We have no origin stories. I'm actually inclined to believe that the inside actually created the outside.Why does the Outside get to measure the Inside using its own standards, but the Inside doesn't get to judge the Outside?
...
Because the Outside created the Inside, which has no being or reality apart from what the Outside gives it, and which is literally nothing of itself? There is no possibility of parity in such a relationship.
Its certainly real, but how it came to be real is the question. Earwa seems adept at turning groupthink into reality, eg Kellhus is actually divine because he convinced enough people to believe him. Similarly I think the Eannas created their own gods which now rule over them, damned the universe, etc. This is just a crackpot though.Nah, Kellhus is divine because he's serwes husband, not because he convinced people to believe in his divinity.
Supernatural speed?
Take kellhus' magical moment at the end of the first book. We're supposed to believe that this heavily ritualized week long meditation is mystically somehow less magical an experience because we are given an elaborate and belabored series of supposedly rational explanations that leverage orwellian language to declare it "not magic". But it's still a fucking supernatural experience, as thoroughly impossible in real life as any magic of akka.
All the week long meditation worship scene is, is is a mechanism for whelming and controlling kellhus.
Take kellhus' magical moment at the end of the first book. We're supposed to believe that this heavily ritualized week long meditation is mystically somehow less magical an experience because we are given an elaborate and belabored series of supposedly rational explanations that leverage orwellian language to declare it "not magic". But it's still a fucking supernatural experience, as thoroughly impossible in real life as any magic of akka.
All the week long meditation worship scene is, is is a mechanism for whelming and controlling kellhus.
is this about the Circumfixion?
Take kellhus' magical moment at the end of the first book. We're supposed to believe that this heavily ritualized week long meditation is mystically somehow less magical an experience because we are given an elaborate and belabored series of supposedly rational explanations that leverage orwellian language to declare it "not magic". But it's still a fucking supernatural experience, as thoroughly impossible in real life as any magic of akka.
All the week long meditation worship scene is, is is a mechanism for whelming and controlling kellhus.
is this about the Circumfixion?
Circumfixion was TWP, not TDTCB.
But the boy clutched his father’s sword, crying, “So long as men live, there are crimes!”
The man’s eyes filled with wonder. “No, child,” he said. “Only so long as men are deceived.”
For a moment, the young Anasûrimbor could only stare at him. Then solemnly, he set aside his father’s sword and took the stranger’s hand. “I was a prince,” he mumbled.
The stranger brought him to the others, and together they celebrated their strange fortune. They cried out—not to the Gods they had repudiated but to one another—that here was evident a great correspondence of cause. Here awareness most holy could be tended. In Ishuäl, they had found shelter against the end of the world.
Still emaciated but wearing the furs of kings, the Dûnyain chiselled the sorcerous runes from the walls and burned the Grand Vizier’s books. The jewels, the chalcedony, the silk and cloth-of-gold, they buried with the corpses of a dynasty.
So like the Thousand Thousand Halls … So like Ishuäl.
...
The work of Nonmen.
The word comes from Italian grotta, Vulgar Latin grupta, Latin crypta, (from the Greek κρύπτη krýptē "hidden vault").
For his part, Achamian did not know what to believe. All he knew was that the Mop was no ordinary forest and that the encircling trees were no ordinary trees.
Crypts, Pokwas had called them.
...
Aside from his one nightmarish dream of the finding the No-God, he had dreamed of naught but the same episode since climbing free of Cil-Aujas: the High-King Celmomas giving Seswatha the map detailing the location of Ishuäl—the birthplace of Anasûrimbor Kellhus—telling him to secure it beneath the Library of Sauglish... In the Coffers, no less.
"Keep it, old friend. Make it your deepest secret..."
But the boy clutched his father’s sword, crying, “So long as men live, there are crimes!”The implication here is that there are no crimes when men are no longer deceived. This means that once they achieve their Absolute, they expect the world to live happily ever after in perfect harmony. Seems odd.
The man’s eyes filled with wonder. “No, child,” he said. “Only so long as men are deceived.”
For a moment, the young Anasûrimbor could only stare at him. Then solemnly, he set aside his father’s sword and took the stranger’s hand. “I was a prince,” he mumbled.He does not say he was an anasurimbor. Though, its just as likely it was mentioned 'off screen'.
The stranger brought him to the others, and together they celebrated their strange fortune. They cried out—not to the Gods they had repudiated but to one another—that here was evident a great correspondence of cause.I agree this could indicated celebration of finding an Anasurimbor, or finding the place itself.