[What Came Before]

edit: as for Serwe being a mechanism through which Yatwer can influence world events, I don't think such a vindictive deity would endorse Kellhus and then turn on him after accomplishing what presumably Serwe was supposed to set the groundwork for.

Maybe it's like duskweaver says - making Serwe, from her vulnerability, more god than Yatwer is?

[What Came Before]

I'm torn between  attributing the qualities of the God to serwe, or just regarding her as another one of yatwer's own. But why support a figure that your god comes to denounce?

[What Came Before]

But Serwe (and to a lesser extent, Mim) is not the driving force.  Think of it like the WLW. 
Serwe is the mechanism by which innocence annoints Kellhus as the mechanism for modernization that can allow innocence to flourish. 
And to oppose the Consult, which is the incarnation of the dominance of damnation over the objective world.
Kellhus himself is the end product of the dunyain project which started in the ashes of the first apocalypse. 

Serwe's role is, perhaps, to ward him against the otherwise inevitable corruption that would, for example, have claimed Moenghus.

If you read the circumfix scene again, it's very obvious that what triggers Kellhus' breakdown is his inability to process the fact of Serwe's death. It fills him with a profound horror that he can barely understand, let alone try to reign in with his Dunyain training. This is because the senseless murder of such an innocent soul pierces all of Kellhus' defense mechanisms and actually elicits a genuine human reaction: regret for being responsible for her death, a reluctant compassion, a burgeoning realization that perhaps he did in fact feel something tender for Serwe.

And so when the walking embodiment of the Logos is confronted with the cold-blooded murder and abuse of Innocence, it can't process it. Rationality throws in the towel, and this somehow opens the door for the No-God/God of Gods/SOMETHING to come in and muck shit up in Kellhus' head. And so we are left to wonder what it is that truly guides the events of the Bakkerverse: is it the cold, mechanical Logos, or the movements of Innocence?

edit: as for Serwe being a mechanism through which Yatwer can influence world events, I don't think such a vindictive deity would endorse Kellhus and then turn on him after accomplishing what presumably Serwe was supposed to set the groundwork for.

Looking for stuff on Ganrelka, I ran into this thread, and this particular, extremely memorable post by Happy Ent.

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/22166-prince-of-nothing/page__st__320

What’s not to get? The God is everywhere, our souls are merely pinpricks in the fabric of reality, through which the outside shines. There are at least two monologues about this, by Kellhus or Achamian, though I cannot readily tell you where they are.

You, Relic, and I are the same. And we’re both God, or at least fragments of Him.

Place is merely a boundary imposed by reality. Once you can penetrate that boundary, you can reach through those pinpricks and manifest yourself anywhere else.

This is why Kellhus can speak, quite early, in a way that is heard inside your head, and later through other people. This is also how cants of calling work, and by extension, how Kellhus’s upgrade to the same cants makes it possible for him to translocate not only his consciousness, but his entire body. 20 years later, he can even take Esmi with him on those trips.

At the moment of Kellhus’s transformation, when he becomes the living God Made Flesh, his mastery of these concepts is complete, if only for a brief instance. He and Serwë are the same, their boundaries of flesh mean nothing to him, so there is no mystery in him reaching into “his own” chest and pullling “Serwë’s” heart out.

It’s certainly not how our reality works. But given what we know of Eärwa, it’s sounds like a pretty straightforward thing to do. (Note that Eärwan metaphysics aren’t a smörgåsbord of cool spells. Healing seems to be impossible. But ripping your wife’s heart out of your own chest? Lvl 3, at -4 against EMP, no fumbles.)

[What Came Before]

Wow these are some wildly divergent interpretations we got here. Now that's the mark of good literature

[What Came Before]

You, Relic, and I are the same. And we’re both God, or at least fragments of Him.

The problem with all this is that the idea of damnation is, at least on the face of it, pretty thoroughly incompatible with this sort of pantheism.

If this explicitly pantheist concept of the God of Gods is true in Earwa, then there must be something really big and important we've not yet been told/shown about damnation.

[What Came Before]

There are ways of interpretation that encompas it.

Redemption and damnation provide forms of eternal 'life' in the outside.  You get trapped and your personality defining experiences are melded with other, similar ones.  But (at least, for the damned) there is no change, choice or causality, so for these 'harvested' souls there is no agency.  Perhaps its different for the exalted, and Serwe and Mim may turn out to be evidence of that.

The third (and seemingly more natural) option is oblivion - which in this metaphysical model would encompass the dissolution of experiential memory and personal meaning.
Nil'Giccas describes it as 'becoming' in TJE, which could be read as pointing towards some form of rebirth or re-incarnation (i.e. the soul is washed clean and returned to the cycle).
This could even explain the Few - they might be souls that have achieved a second chance through oblivion?

Thus the outside is made of the stuff that differentiates souls, their reflections of the true world.  It is God's subconsious, if you like, and for a soul to become trapped there is to become a 'memory'.

[What Came Before]

An explanation for sorcery, I like. Not even the Nonmen have figured that one out.

[What Came Before]

I'd hazard that the whole Nonmen becoming thing is new - likely, a defining characteristic of Erratism.

[What Came Before]

Erratism... a new religion?

[What Came Before]

You, Relic, and I are the same. And we’re both God, or at least fragments of Him.

The problem with all this is that the idea of damnation is, at least on the face of it, pretty thoroughly incompatible with this sort of pantheism.

If this explicitly pantheist concept of the God of Gods is true in Earwa, then there must be something really big and important we've not yet been told/shown about damnation.

Well, you can think of the Damnation machine as the superego of the God of Gods run amok. There are many references to the Hundred being the myriad aspects of the God, broken up into a thousand pieces each warring for the supremacy of their own domain. It's not all that different from how we human beings themselves are fraught with inner turmoil; base appetite vs. higher aspirations, cognitive dissonance, saying one thing and doing the opposite etc. Pretty sure some character in WLW says as much. Point is the sum of the Hundred might make up the supreme God, but as they stand, fractured into many different identities, it is a very fractious pantheon arbitrated by a Damnation machine that does more harm than good.

[What Came Before]

Damnation is the big G slowly becoming Erratic?
All he can recall is trauma...

[What Came Before]

...

You have to account for how much memories constitute your sense of self.

I think, regardless of my Nerdanel about the Dunyain being complicit, the Erratic is a new entity in the shell of the old Nonmen. Their new continuity is this "I" who is always becoming, who has no concrete sense of that self, except the one that is built from trauma. It's argued that trauma forms the most long-lasting, but more importantly, immediate memories. Only by this can they build a small sense of self, never complete, covered with flesh, blood, and simulacra that cast shadows of memories of who they once were.... always recovering, becoming, their former self.

[mrganondorf]

Madness, I agree--I wonder if Serwe could be at all mixed up with Yatwer.  Goddess of giving and the one person who gave everything she had to Kellhus.  She is innocent/ignorant--the royal road for Yatwerians!

A little part of me is hoping that Serwe is the reason for Kellhus' 'madness'.  Hanging on the Circumfix, Kellhus' brain reorients to do anything, even kill the world, to get Serwe back.  I would suspect that this is Moenghus' doing, that old Moe needed Kell to break down in such a way to achieve Moe's greater end.  It would get interesting if Kellhus has also seen this and has prepared some awesome sweet means of subverting his dad's plan. 

Since Earwa is all about the metaphysical, maybe Serwe's devotion to Kellhus, her conviction that lil Moenghus is Kellhus' kid, and Kellhus extra special seed does something to little Moe while he's in the womb?  Little Moe ends up being the metaphysical Last Scion?

[mrganondorf]

Serwe sees the halos both on Kellhus and the skin-spy Kellhus--perhaps we can infer that the halos are created by the watcher, cast onto the watched so to speak.  Kellhus convinces Serwe he is divine and her belief is so poweful it begins to change him into divinity, an ascension that is ongoing through WLW.  It might be that Kellhus is angling to produce a certain kind of belief at a very high level through: if the No-God returns, everyone will know that Kellhus was telling the truth about the coming doom. 

Paradoxically, failing to prevent the No-God (and maybe getting killed in the process) might raise him to godhood.  Would he have a blindspot for Mog?  Or would he be the one god to reveal Mog to the others.  Divine Kellhus leads Yatwer, Akkeagne, and Gilgaol to save the world!

[Wilshire]

Good ideas all. I think Kellhus might himself have realized this at some point ( his assertion that he is "more" than Dunyain ), but it was not initially his goal. Serwe sees instrumental in Kellhus' divinity, dying for the belief, and convincing the Holy War, which in turn convinced him. In Earwa, lies are truth if believed by enough people.

Not sure if anyone can ascend, but certainly Kellhus has that unique chance if it is at all possible.