Does damnation await all, not just sorcerors?

Re-reading WLW, I found this passage relating to the death of Sutadra, one of the Skin Eaters.  At that moment, Mimara's Judging Eye opens, and here's what she sees (USA 1st Edition hardcover, p62-63):

"She can see it all...  The oversights, the hypocrasies, the mistakes, the accumulation of petty jealousies and innumerable small selfish acts.  A wife struck on a wedding night.  A son neglected...  And beneath these cankers, she sees the black cancer of far greater crimes, the offenses that could be neither denied nor forgiven.  Villages burned on fraudulent suspicions.  Innocents massacred.

But she also sees the clear skin of heroism and sacrifice.  The white of devotion. The gold of unconditioned love.  The gleam of loyalty and long silence.  The high blue of indomitable strength.

Sutadra, she realizes, is a good man broken down, a man forced, time and again, to pitch his scruples against the unscalable walls of circumstance -- forced.  A man who erred for the sake of mad and overwhelming expediences.  A man besieged by history...

She knows he is damned."

Here we have a clear case of moral accounting, if you will.  Notice what does NOT count: religion (neither Inrithism nor Fanimry), devotion to the gods, proper sacrifices, rites, and prayers.  Notice what also doesn't seem to be a factor: there's no clear "weighing" in favor of sin against virtue that contributes to damnation.  "...pitch[ing] his scruples against the unscalable walls of circumstance," "a man besieged by history" -- there is absolutely nothing remarkable about these qualities at all.  Do these not describe all men?

If it's only Mimara, I'd be reluctant to accept it wholesale.  Yet we have independent confirmation of this from "The False Sun."  Shaeönanra thinks "All Men wailed. All Men burned all the time. They need only die to realize it."  Aurang also says "You are already damned. All of you are already damned."

In fact, we have even more confirmation from the the preview section of The Unholy Consult.  What explains Ieva's betrayal of Nau-Cayuti?  Shaeönanra says it's to escape damnation.  But we have no evidence to indicate that Ieva is a witch.  She's merely an ordinary human being.  Yet she is also damned?

It looks like The Consult may be right after all..  :shock:

In the scene with the synthese, they refer to Mimara as a false prophecy.

The only prophecy we know of is that of the Celmomian prophecy.

The search at the end of The Warrior Prophet is triggered by the return of an Anasurimbor.

The Consult KNOW that Kellhus came to the Momemn from the West, accompanied by a Scylvendie of the Utemot and claiming to come from Atraithau to the North and the West of Momemn.

And yet they BEGIN their search to the North and the East of Momemn.  They begin their search North of the Meorn forest, in a forgotten tribe of humans.  Far, far away from the area Kellhus claims to have originated from.

Why?

Perhaps the consult know more of the prophecy, an additional fact that would cause them to disregard all their knowledge of where Kellhus came from and search somewhere else, somewhere it was more important or more urgent to search, for some reason.

Perhaps what they know of the false prophecy is that an Anasurimbor would return, and they would return via the Meorn forest.

That would be Mimara, suddenly fulfilling all the aspects of the prophecy.

Perhaps...

I'd love to see Cnaiur being part of Slog of Slogs in Cil-Aujas. Not that pussy Kosoter...crier.

He would be the best Scalper ever. The most violent of men.

UPDATE from Wilshire: JULY 12TH, 2016
Check out Bakker's blog or this post for more details.

Welcome to the Second Apocalypse.

Take a seat, make a username, and stay awhile. This is the largest and most active  R. Scott Bakker fan community. We'll probably know the official date before anyone else, so stick around.

Future updates to come.

I have been lurking and reading here for about a month now.  Howdy everyone, I'm new here, but not to the second apocalypse.

Here are a few questions I have regarding this forum.  How are y'all getting answers to the books?  How did you all learn about who created the tusk, our is it true the inchies made it?
Where does it say what the tekne is?  What is it?  What is the aporos?
How can y'all understand anything from the white luck chapters?  The only sense is that he did kill maithenet.

Books questions...
How does the chishaurim psuke work?  We all got a lesson in gnostic sorcery from akka the depressing.  But all I know of psyuke (or however it's spelled) is it doesnt leave a mark and its not as powerful as gnosis, and its emotionally driven... But what the hell does that even mean.

When maithenet is killedhe tells esmenet (the most annoying character ever conceived) to tell kellus.... Then he dies.  What was it?  What was the message?

The scalpers, what the hell was going on?  Was ironsoul actually doing kellus bidding?  Then Why not just take the last non man king and akka and mimara right to the ordeal?  Why did that soma skin spy sacrifice itself for mimara?
If kellus supposedly sanctioned this entire akka with scalpers mission, then why doesn't he know that nilgiccas is there and not at ishterebinth? 

Sorweel...  Its obvious he is a pawn If the goddess, I get it and accept it.  He's not the white Luck, but is chosen by the mother of birth. His purpose is unknown.  But his mission with the siblings seems to be a trap because cleric tells akka that his mansion now owes allegiance to golgoterath. 

One other thing, why do so many here think kellus would side with the consult?

So me and a friend of mine were at a book store and I convinced my friend to start the AE, as he has read the PoN (thanks to much prodding on my part). He checked out at the counter with JE and WLW in hand, and the clerk looked up at him and said "You're lucky. They stopped printing the Judgeing Eye. You just got one of the last ones".

Is that for real or is the clerk retarded?

edit:
Store was barnes and noble

wherein the kindly reader attempts to determine why mimara perspectives are written in present tense.

the controlling theoretical concept--

Quote

IX   

My wing is ready for flight,   
I would like to turn back.
If I stayed timeless time, 
I would have little luck. 
 
Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung bereit,
ich kehrte gern zurück,
denn blieb ich auch lebendige Zeit,
ich hätte wenig Glück.
 
Gerherd Scholem,
‘Gruss vom Angelus’   

  A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.   
 

(benjamin, w.  "Theses on the Philosophy of History," IX) (emphasis added). 

(FWIW, here's the klee angelus novus:  http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/LO28906_AngelusNovus.jpg.  it's weimar expressionism, so WTF, aye?)

the relevant textual evidence--

Quote

She is inclined to see history as degeneration.  Years ago, not long after her mother brought her to the Andiamine Heights, an earthquake struck Momemn, not severe, but violent enough to crack walls and to set arms and ornaments toppling.  There had been a mural in particular, the Osto-Didian, the eunuchs called it, depicting the First Holy War battling about Shimeh, with all the combatants cramped shield to shield, sword to sword, like dolls bound into sheaves.  Where other murals had been webbed with fractures, this one seemed to have been pounded by hammers.  Whole sections had sloughed away, exposing darker, deeper images:  naked men across the backs of bulls.  In shallow sockets here and there even this layer had given out, especially near the centre, where her stepfather had once hung out of proportion in the sky.  There, after dabbing away the white powder with her fingertips, she saw a young man's mosaic face, black hair high in the wind, child-wide eyes fixed upon some obscured foe.

That, she understood, was history:  the piling on of ages like plaster and paint, each image a shroud across the others, the light of presence retreating, from the Nonmen to the Five Tribes to the New Empire, coming at last to a little girl in the embrace of hard-handed men.

To the daughter who dined with her Empress mother, listening to the tick of enamel tapping gold, watching the older woman's eyes wander lines of sorrow, remorse thick enough to spit.

To the woman who raged beneath a wizard's tower.

To now.

She is inclined to see history as degeneration, and what greater proof did she need, now that they walked beneath the mural of mannish strife, now that they touched the glass of first things?

Cil-Aujas.  Great and dead, a mosaic exposed.  What was human paint compared to this?

(IV.16 at 364) (emphasis added).

application of the controlling theoretical concept to the textual evidence of the case--
there are several readings here:

a ) mimi is benjamin's angel of history, as she sees no chain of events, but one single catastrophe--but, unlike benjamin's description, she misunderstands what she sees, reading the pile of wreckage as spenglerian degeneration, rather than enlightened progress.

b ) mimi is benjamin's angel of history, as she sees no chain of events, but a single catastrophe--and, like benjamins's description, she understands the nasty irony arising out of claims to progress when the entire world is destroyed.

c ) mimi is not benjamin's angel of history, but is rather an anti-angel of history or an angel of anti-history, truly seeing the unfolding of history as a single catastrophe, but understanding it in a way that inverts, parodies, or refutes benjamin's conception, whether ironic or not:  degeneration rather than progress.  instead of a marxist conception of history unfolding progressively, we get a fundamentally ovidian conception of history rotting away:

Quote

First sprung the age of gold. Unforc'd by laws
 Strict rectitude and faith, spontaneous then
 Mankind inspir'd. No judge vindictive frown'd;
 Unknown alike were punishment and fear:
 No strict decrees on brazen plates were seen;
 Nor suppliant crowd, with trembling limbs low bent,
 Before their judges bow'd. Unknown was law,
 Yet safe were all.

[...]

Then a silver age
 Succeeded; by the golden far excell'd;—
 Itself surpassing far the age of brass.
 The ancient durance of perpetual spring
 He shorten'd, and in seasons four the year
 Divided:—Winter, summer, lessen'd spring,
 And various temper'd autumn first were known.
 Then first the air with parching fervor dry,
 Glow'd hot;—then ice congeal'd by piercing winds
 Hung pendent;—houses then first shelter'd man;
 Houses by caverns form'd, with thick shrubs fenc'd,
 And boughs entwin'd with osiers. Then the grain
 Of Ceres first in lengthen'd furrows lay;
 And oxen groan'd beneath the weighty yoke.
 
Third after these a brazen race succeeds,
 More stern in soul, and more in furious war
 Delighting;—still to wicked deeds averse.
 
The last from stubborn iron took its name;—
 And now rush'd in upon the wretched race
 All impious villainies: Truth, faith, and shame,
 Fled far; while enter'd fraud, and force, and craft,
 And plotting, with detested avarice.
 To winds scarce known the seaman boldly loos'd
 His sails, and ships which long on lofty hills
 Had rested, bounded o'er the unsearch'd waves.
 The cautious measurer now with spacious line
 Mark'd out the land, in common once to all;
 Free as the sun-beams, or the lucid air.
 Nor would the fruits and aliments suffice,
 The rich earth from her surface threw, but deep
 Within her womb they digg'd, and thence display'd,
 Riches, of crimes the prompter, hid far deep
 Close by the Stygian shades.

(ovid, metamorphoses, I at ll. 88-142).

a.d. melville reads that final bit, awesomely, as:

Quote

Nor did earth's rich return od crops and food
Suffice; the bowels of the world were forced
And wealth deep hidden next the gates of Hell
Dug out, the spur of wickedness and sin.

all three readings rely on her present-tense voice, alone in the narrative.  she is most certainly the negation of "the geometry of Nautzera's world":

Quote

there was no present, only the clamor of a harrowing past and threat of a corresponding future.  For Nautzera, the present had receded to a point, had become the precarious fulcrum whereby history leveraged destiny.

(I.2 at 67).

mimara, by contrast, is only the present, wherein the future and the past are superimposed.  benjamin's angel sees progress in wreckage, whereas mimi sees degeneration in viewable murals.  it's an odd inversion.  still, though, my impression is that she sees it truly but reads it falsely:  it is progress, but she understands it through the false consciousness imposed by the setting.  she might accordingly also see truly with the judging eye--but interprets it wrongly, through bogus moral concepts imposed by historical, rather than ontological, necessity.

Reading this book for the third time, and stumbled across a sleeping T-Rex...  Did, did, did he really just accidentally give away the outcome of the Great Ordeal?!     Or am I hallucinating? 

USA First Edition 2009, Hardcover, Page 163-164:

"... an endless train of supplies wound in front of the southern horizon, bearing arms, wares, rations, and more rations...  Vast herds of sheep and cattle, bred solely to accompany the march, were also beaten across the horizon, so many that some Men of the Ordeal began calling themselves ka Koumiroi, or the Herdsmen -- a name that would later become holy."

If the Great Ordeal fails, there would be no one left alive in the world to talk about it, to make it "later become holy" (similar to how the word "Veteran" became holy in the aftermath of the Holy War).  This must mean the Ordeal will eventually succeed, somehow, in preventing the rise of No-God for the second time.

Or am I crazy?!