Ok, doubling down on this crackpot: what if *all* of the Gods were inprisoned in the Carapace?  The Consult find a way to gather the "thousand warring splinters" and lock them away.  It offers an alternative explanation for the Gods ignorance of the No-God. And it might explain the Indigo Plague that occurred after the No-God's defeat.

@locke, that's a good point. Only thing I can think is that perhaps the Outside isn't so much a place where Gods and Ciphrang hang out, but instead the collective of what Meppa deems "hungers across the surface of eternity".  So perhaps what's really happening is imprisoning the Outside itself and therefore, sealing the world?

"Poor" Akka just can't catch a break.

I wanted to ask (but chickened out) for Ant to elaborate on what clues he'd found during his reread. It's an interesting theory for sure.

On the name, "Angel of Endless Hunger" I disagree though.  If they named it an angel, which had an endless hunger, they must have experienced something that made it seem so.  What made it seem like an Angel and what seemed like "Endless Hunger?"  I think there is definitely something to that.

Ok, bear with me, but...

...what if the No-God is Yatwer?  What if they summoned an "angel", and specifically, the goddess of birth, and imprisoned her in the Carapace?

I reread the series twice, but now I kind of reread select parts here and there, in my quest for minutia. 

H, I know exactly what you mean.  It feels like every time I re-read the Kellhus/Moe dialogue, for example, I discover yet another tiny bit that *might* end up being important.   And the portion of TJE where Akka decides to let Mimara into the tower.

I think the whole philosophical difference between why there is such a difference between the 'passion' based and 'linguistic' based sorcery might be a bit over my head though.

Yeah, it's really hard to pin down.

The way I've conceived it is an adaption of St. Thomas Aquinas' proof for the existence of God.  The first part, "Argument from Motion", expands on Aristotle's notion of a "prime mover", the idea of a single inciting force for all motion in creation; in Aquinas' proof, the "inciting force" is God. 

This specific line stands out as applicable to the difference between sorcery and the Psukhe:

For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.

It could be that in Earwa, "motion" is impetus and "actuality" is representation. So the Cishaurim effectively channel "the stuff of Creation", that which causes things to be come. 

Not sure if it's right at all.  But it seems along the lines of what might happen if a philospher wrote a fantasy series. 

Earwa (or more properly, the universe that Earwa exists in) is a place where "meaning" is laced into the fiber of everything, a universe that turns on the subjective will of consciousness. Which is obviously somewhat of an inversion of our world...or at least, the modern scientific model of the world as we know it (which is essentially the Dunyain/Inchoroi model).

Bakker has referenced the "man coming down from the mountain to find meaning in a meaningless world" as being inverted in his story, where a man (Kellhus) comes into a meaningful world believing it to be meaningless.

I agree with the sentiment of what Wilshire said up-thread though. In our world, everyone believed in gods/monsters until we dug so far into the nature of existence that it seemed void of anything. In TSA, the Inchoroi did the same, only to find that the universe was ruled by gods and monsters (specifically, gods that are quite alien to their sensibilities).

Awesome stuff, FB!

So, Kellhus as protagonist?  So, to revisit my earlier theorem, Kellhus saves the world and destroys meaning at the same time?

For whatever reason, I've trouble imagining an ending like this.   RSB's implied that the first 6 books are just there to get us to the really interesting stuff in TWSNBN.  And I can't help but think it has to be something more than a meaningless universe like our own.  It could be that a meaningless world is Kellhus' goal but that things don't exactly go as planned...

I'm not sure, I actually have a really hard time squaring the metaphysics, myself.  I think that we can't discount the blindness as a major part of why the Psukhe is what it is, i.e. Markless.  There is no doubt in my mind that the blindness "unharnesses" the Water, but is also part and parcel of it's metaphysical nature.

The biggest thing that bothers me about the blinding is why do the Cishaurim stop at sight?  If the goal of blinding is to decrease one's perception of representation, wouldn't removing other senses only serve to increase this effect?   Why is sight so important?

One answer is rooted in distinguishing characteristic of the Few: the ability to "see" the Onta.  While Achamian describes it as having been "experienced" rather than simply seen, the description reads like an enlightened form of sight. 

It could be that the Cishaurim are of the Few and can perceive the Onta.  But because the representational experience is an outgrowth literal sight, it effectively masks the performative experience.  It's only in the absence of the representational experience (in a permanent sense) that they can tap into the other.   Note that this line of reasoning also has the side-bonus of explaining why the Cish are one-hit-killed by Chorae.

I like Seokti's conception of the Cishaurim as "rift mages" who expose fissures between the physical world and... something.  I'm not super-comfortable calling it the Outside.  Although the Gods seem to be able to meddle in the physical world without consequence.  So maybe bringing in the Outside isn't a "Markable" offense to Earwan metaphysics?

Searching through the e-books, Aurax isn't mentioned until TTT. And then in only a historical context.

That doesn't rule out the Inchi at the end of TWP being Aurax. But based on his supposed role as the one who may have taught the Tekne to the Mangaecca, he seems like the type to stay back in Golgatterath thinking of new, horrible things. Like Dr. Mindbender from GI Joe...