Greetings to all! First time poster here.
After just finishing the series (but following it for quite some time) I should say I'm very satisfied that, in my opinion, almost all serious metaphysical questions pertaining to the world of the Second Apocalypse found their answers. It took some thinking, but in the end I came up with explanations that work for me and, basically, require no other installments in the series to feel content. I would like to offer my views below. I would, of course, place them under a spoiler tag since they are all huge spoilers.
The main reason for me to post what is essentially my personal interpretations is to solicit thoughts and observations I may have missed in my reasoning. While some things do work as explanations for me, they can also seem a bit too complicated, even contrived. So I would like to hear what other people think about them. The Second Apocalypse is dense, and I'm also less acquainted than I would like with relevant pieces of information R. Scott Bakker gave outside of the series (it's really hard to find all of them). I do think I quite possibly missed something crucial somewhere and feel I may be mistaken in my assumptions, thus missing simple, elegant explanations of complex concepts. There are also some plot points (though not very significant in the grand scheme of things for me) that I'm not sure about.
I quite enjoy the inner workings of the Second Apocalypse and would like to better my understanding of the series. I apologize if my following post seems like a stream of consciousness, but I fear never actually completing editing it otherwise. Making personal notes easily readable for others is
hard. Thank you in advance for reading (or at least attempting it)!
The Judging Eye as the antithesis to the No-God. The No-God is perfectly unconscious, while the unborn soul behind the Judging Eye is perfectly conscious and so perceives Logos. In a way, it's a self-moving soul, but one without desire to move, thus being objective. It's a part of the God, but one not yet influenced by the material world, by the cycle of before and after and desire, and so the closest to its origin. This is at odds with medical reality since unborn children are perfectly capable of feeling and wanting, they're not clean slates. The noted inconsistency might be tied in to the fact that the mothers possessing the Judging Eye always give birth to stillborn children. This might be connected to sensory deprivation allowing to come closer to the God, which is reinforced by Markless sorcery of the Cishaurim and arcane prowess of Titigra (who was a blind, possibly from birth, Gnostic sorcerer). Still, it all seems much more complicated than I feel comfortable with, though it works as an explanation for me.
The Judging Eye as the antithesis to the Amiolas. The Amiolas offers knowledge, while the Judging Eye shows Truth. Both are connected to souls, of the world and not. Why one of Mimara children was stillborn and the other not? The significance of this to the workings of the Judging Eye. The Judging Eye is not the perspective of the Outside agencies, since it can see the No-God, which no Outside agency is able to do.
Sins can be defined as transgressions committed against other souls, other vestiges of the God. This is reinforced by Mimara thinking her forgiveness will free Galian of his sin when he tries to rape her. It ties in to the nature of damnation, salvation, and oblivion. Souls that transgressed against others using the material are subject to retribution from the victims in the Outside, being one against many. Sorcerers are gaining attention of Outside agencies as potential rivals, since the already impose their will on the world through sorcery. Agencies of the Outside being spiteful and generally what they are, this leads to damnation. Those souls who traversed life more or less without perturbing others pass into oblivion. And finally those who gained favor (be it in the Outside, by virtue of worship, or maybe even by their good deeds during their lifetimes) are saved, since Outside agencies offer them boons instead of malice. Considering the stance of the series on people, it's unsurprising there is only a Hundred Heavens for a Thousand Hells, if what I surmised above is true.
The Outside as a place of will instead of meaning and ontology. Ontology should be meaningless in the Outside, since there is no time there, no cause and effect. Those exist only in relation to the material. Outside as a place of soul and the real world as a place of cause and effect. Sorcery as being both of the material world and the Outside, as souls trying to make sense of cause in effect, thus creating meaning, which can never be perfect, since meaning is not a thing of itself, it's relative to the workings of the material and the Outside.
Sorcery is a lie in the sense of constituting the act of creation by imperfect souls, as opposed to the Creation brought forth by the God (or by ontological connections too vast and numerous for any mind to grasp, rephrasing it more scientifically). In other words, sorcery is not ontologically sound. Chorae expose this lie, thus serving as ontological stressors. In that regard Chorae only work on sorcery and not on damned souls, which means that of itself the Mark is not a sign of damnation. So Chorae embody the principle of Creation as created, destroying the imperfections of sorcery on contact. Alternatively, Chorae, as "points of nothingness", embody the absence of meaning (but inside the framework of meaning itself; also potentially working only to some extent). That's why they seem perfect (in different ways to the Few and to the Judging Eye) as opposed to the imperfection of sorcery. Psukhe, while being Markless, is no different, because those dispensing its Water are still Men and their creations are not the Creation (ontologically unsound). The Mark is created by imperfect meaning, while Psukhe is Markless because it consists of pure feeling as given by the God, without the flaws of the incomplete knowledge of Men. Expanding on this definition, Gnostic sorcery follows formal knowledge, while Anagogis stems from creativity. In essence, they represent the dichotomy of science and art. Sorcerers bear the strongest Marks because they are always the point of origin of their sorcery.
Expanding on Psukhe, it can be explained as powered by pure movement of a soul, the inner workings of the darkness that comes before that constitutes all Men, something so primal it precedes meaning and forms the very roots of will and desire, thus being the power of the Outside similar to manifestations of its agencies (probably of a higher order than Cants, but of a lower order than a summoned Ciphrang, for example, which can very well be completely unaffected by Chorae). I should note that this seems contrived.
One way of looking at why Mimara was able to exorcise the Wight-in-the-Mountain is, again, to consider it in the ontological sense. By combining a Chorae, an ontological stressor, with Truth shown by the Judging Eye she influenced the world to right a wrong of a higher ontological order than sorcery. The Wight, an agency of the Outside, did not belong in the material world. By extension, this means that topoi are not ontologically sound, though less so than sorcery. This could also explain why Chorae hurt Wracu, who might be a kind of living topoi. In a similar fashion this explains the existence of artifacts immune to Chorae; they are more ontologically sound than Cants. Such artifacts can alternatively be explained by pure craftsmanship, the appliance of some unknown techniques to nullify the effect of Chorae.
Topoi and anarcane ground. Is Earwa the promised world because both of those things are possible there? What happens to those who die on anarcane ground; are they beyond the scope of damnation and redemption? This seems unlikely given that the Inchoroi could have just relocated there (though doing something peacefully quite possibly violently contradicts their nature). Then again, what of the Consult? They are not Inchoroi and worry only about saving their souls, everything else is means to an end for them. At this point (after The Unholy Consult) there might not be enough relevant information given in the series to answer those questions.
The darkness that comes before and Logos. Where Dunyain quite simply plain wrong about both? Is the darkness not a fault, but a blessing, a way to gain purchase on the world, have the sense of self? It seems the series makes a point of condemning both the ways of pure logic (Logos as the Dunyain define it) and the ways of faith as well as sorcerous congress with the Outside (as do the followers of the Gods on one hand and Kellhus, and to a lesser extent practitioners of Daimos, on the other). Dunyain snuffed out emotion trying to conquer the darkness that comes before and became machines of undiluted domination. The Inchoroi made a similar mistake with their singular pursuit of indulgence. The faithful in essence slave themselves to one principle as well, that principle being their God. Only those who are diverse, who live many desires and aspirations, controlling them and failing to control them, who always try to find themselves are portrayed as human and good or at least in some fashion sympathetic (Achamian, Esmenet, Mimara, and Serwa - maybe with Kayutas - in contrast to others possessing Dunyain blood). They are all owned by the darkness that comes before, it precedes them completely, but it also makes them themselves. So the darkness is not so much preceding them as being them. Am I overthinking it, veering straight into moralizing territory? In the case of Logos, it's ultimately portrayed as just a purely unattainable ideal, the one that's forever out of reach; in essence, another Goad, similar to the Inverse Fire. To top it off, taking the notion of Logos from the Nonmen (indirectly, through passed down warped knowledge) Dunyain didn't even understood the meaning and purpose of the original concept, which led to them completely excising sorcerous implications from it, rendering it all but meaningless. Am I missing something here? It all quite possibly can be an oversimplification.
Why was Kelmomas always invisible to the Gods? Because there is no time in the Eternal, and so he was always the No-God from that point of view? Why is the No-God activated only by an Anasurimbor? Is it because (alleged) Nonman heritage in their bloodline? Can the world, then, be shut only by using the code of all its (souled) races and not just one (Man)? What is the significance of the Carapace not having Chorae embedded in it anymore?
Why did the No-God change its behaviour and offered battle during the first Apocalypse? The proposed explanation that years of attrition forced it to intervene seems extremely suspect to me, since the No-God needed only wait for Men to exhaust themselves, new birth being unavailable as it was.
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