[TheCulminatingApe]

Much is made in PON of the Cants of Compulsion, of how they enable the sorceror to possess the 'self' of another, blurring the distinction between the two.  The victims (as per Ch 6 TTT) in 'no way feel compelled', whilst others may control their words and actions, they nevertheless 'choose' to say or do.

We also see at the end of TTT what Kellhus can achieve by adding a second inutteral to a Cant of Calling - essentially turning telepathy into teleportation.  The implication for TAE is what therefore happens when he adds a second inutteral to a Cant of Compulsion (which he must surely have done)?  Is this the process by which he can physically move souls from body to body- i.e. the head swapping?

[Wilshire]

There's a new thought.

I like it. The second inutteral turns the dreamwalking cant from being something that lets your mind travel anywhere without the dimension of time or distance, to allowing the mind and body to do the same.

Seems plausible adding one to the Cants of Compulsion would allow the caster to move about the mind and soul of another, possible to another body. Maybe that it can be used directly to remove the soul from its host body and fling it into the abyss. But using severed heads of people and ciphrang as pokemon balls for souls seems like a reasonable TSA thing to do lol.

[Simas Polchias]

Considering that Cants of Compulsion is one of the most expressive examples about the darkness that comes before... I reckon a second innuteral can upgrade it to some really heavy ordnance. The question is what "direction" the upgrade will unfold?

In case of attack on causality, sorcerer can probably mimic a poor man's white luck. Let's say it is achieved through establishing convenient, conditioned time-loops and "trapping" the world itself into sorcerer's mind until the preferable scenario plays itself out. Essentially, a quicksave-quickload.

In case of accent on human consciousness, it can kinda turn any mind into a rewritable, unlocked text? Imagine if a dunyain is able to work through all the layers of it's own psyche, optimising it, evolving, reshaping — doing in a matter of hours a job that even Ishual was not capable to do in thousand of years. Essentially, a character's skill editor.

[Wilshire]

Both are great ideas. Kellhus Compulsing himself to do something would be quite a trick - especially given his troubles with Ajokli near the end. Though that it seemingly didn't work is probably an argument against such functionality.

Thinking on it from a meta-narrative point of view, its probably too strong a thing to incorporate into the story. You quickly get to the old Meta-Psuke level of nonsense. That said, I still enjoy the implications quite a bit, if we ignore that slant to it.

Given the Uster Scrol short story (The Carathan?), plus the various head swapping things we see and the speculation in light of those pieces of information, the idea of a meta-compulsion becoming Soul Transplanting seems to fit, if tangentially, into the universe.

[H]

Well, perhaps in a way, the Cant of Compulsion speaks to Bakker's appeal to Earwa being based partly on Essentialism, that is that essence (i.e. something like a soul) precedes existence (that is, your body).  In this way of "Before Determining the After" then changing the "essence" changes the existence.  This of course is necessarily confounded by the question of what is a soul but in any case, seems to lead to the same place.