CRACKIN' POTS: (This post actually started in the "Meppa's Role" thread, but it ended up becoming huge and sort of a different topic, so I made a new thread for it -- I may get around to talking about how the hell I think Meppa actually fits into this...some day).
Moenghus was and still is, in some capacity, actually helping Kellhus achieve his "destiny"...whatever that may be, as glimpsed by Moenghus and seemingly grasped by Kellhus. After all, practically the whole of PoN is a story of Kellhus gradually realizing that the World has been conditioned by his father, and while Kellhus is certainly aware of this, he nonetheless behaves as if he has, well, free will for lack of a better word (this arguably becomes blurry after the Umiaki Miracle).
Really, though, I think a great deal of the confusion comes from a misunderstanding of what the Psukhe is, what the Water is, what the intended meaning of Passion is, and most of all what a
soul is. Near the beginning of TGO, when Achamian has the dream of Shauriatas (which we've had access to from the original first excerpt, back in 2013) he mentions the complexity of souls for a good reason:
“But souls are exceedingly complicated,” he continued. “Far more so than the crude sorceries used to trap them. The intricacies of identity are always sheared away. Memory. Faculty. Character. These are cast into the pit... Only the most base urges survive in proxies.”
There's an undeniable influence of Gnostic Christian myth & theology in the series (particularly when it comes to a lot of the subtleties in Earwa's metaphysics), and one glance at a Gnostic "diagram of a soul/spirit" should give an idea that complexity:
I'm not going to even try puzzling all that out with exact metaphysical analogues from TSA, in part simply because I'm not inclined to believe the metaphysics are
fully analogous, but it is a jumping point of sorts.
Getting more to the point, I think a clarification of a few central topics may elucidate some facets of this discussion (or what may be clarifications in my own opinion, anyhow).
The Distinction between Soul & SpiritThis is more or less straight from Gnostic thought, but it appears in plenty of other belief systems in various forms. In common parlance, these words often used interchangeably, but with the metaphysics of Earwa, I think the defining the two notions is key to understanding, well, all sorts of shit in the series.
Basically, the Soul is akin to an exotic form of matter (or energy) which acts as the substrate for the Spirit. What Achamian describes as "the intricacies of identity" -- memory, faculty, character -- are in fact the Spirit of an individual. The things that make you, me, and Napoleon different people.
Souls, on the other hand, are not only identical but are actually the
same thing from the same source (again, not unlike the way that all of our own brains are ultimately just made of atoms that once came from stars, etc.). It's useful to think of souls in the singular. Consciousness is encoded in the substrate of matter. Spirits are written on the substrate of Soul.
The Water
is Soul, the primordial "sea" from which all Soul originated and, eventually, returned to.
Better yet, just think about the Force from Star Wars. The majority of people that die in Star Wars just...die, like regular humans. But in the case of "great sorcerors" like Obi-Wan, Yoda, Anakin, they are able to retain some remnant of their Spirit (identity) even after death, because reasons.
(Also, don't get too attached to the exact phrasing I'm using here because I'm pretty sure things are, as always, a bit more complicated. I'm just going for the main jist of my point here).
So, given all of the above, we can reassess the nature of the Psukhe, a school of sorcery that relies solely on passion. For the sake of expediency, and I will now rattle off a list of my current interpretations of what's going on in a way that may sound like it's totally supported by textual evidence, or as if I think I actually know precisely what's going on. The former is debatable, and the latter is hilariously untrue.
-The Cishaurim, through the art of the Pskuhe and ritualistic blinding, work to strip themselves of a "Self" (identity, spirit) and open their Third Eye (the Heart, seat of the Soul), a conduit to the primordial sea of Souls, called the Water.
-Because the Cishaurim have no Self/Spirit/Identity (or at least a very stunted one), they are also invisible to the gods -- also, by weaponizing pure Soul for their sorcery, it leaves no Mark on World.
-In addition (or alternatively), The God(s?) are blind to the Cishaurim, because by removing their eyes (Windows to the Soul), they've broken the Circuit of Watcher and Watched. It should also be noted that at least one of the reasons the Cishaurim use snakes as their symbiotic sensory apparatus is because snakes traditionally have very poor version, instead relying on taste/scent and thermal detection. This supports the relevance of the Circuit of Watcher and Watched -- the implication is that snakes are chosen deliberately
because they do not rely on optical senses. After all, if you're going to use an animal surrogate for lost vision, why wouldn't you use something that's actually
better at seeing? Like birds for example...
-The text is deliberately misguiding about the Psukhe and true the extent of the Cishaurim's abilities (or any one else who can tap into the Water for that matter -- I don't believe it's exclusive to the Cish). What the Psukhe lacks in raw power it makes up for in subtly, illusion, scrying, dreamwalking, etc. Because of the employment of a traditional, western concept of the Male Gaze through which the series is (mostly) told, and from the patriarchal society of the Three Seas, the Psukhe is disregarded as inferior, and Cishaurim as abominations so "Other" that barely anyone even tries to understand them. This is, of course, just about the worst possible way to approach the Cish, an institution that's seemingly founded on techniques of subterfuge, misinformation, and working as invisibly as possible. Like a spy organization...
- Contrary to first impressions, the Cishaurim are actually an ideal fit for a Dunyain. The text implies that because of the Dunyain’s “stunted emotions”, the Psukhe was a poor choice for Moenghus. But this is misguided, since as we know, the “passion” that drives the Psukhe is actually the most base parts of the Soul -- which are not so much stunted by the Dunyain as
mastered by them.
ConclusionThe climactic confrontation between Kellhus and Moenghus in TTT can be thought of as akin to the scene in The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke is training on Dagobah and ventures down into the cavern. At first, he seems to find Vader down there, confronts him, and defeats him, only for it to be revealed that it was
himself all along.
It’s been theorized many times that what makes Kellhus special is that he doesn’t just read faces -- he reads souls. This is why the people that contend with him are broken/enlightened based entirely on truths about themselves.
When Moenghus blinded himself, he sheared away his spirit, his identity -- the things which made him
different from Kellhus -- thereby becoming a kind of reflecting pool for his son. This is why the conversation between two is so hotly debated and interpretive.
Kellhus is quite literally having a conversation with himself. He went down into the Nonman Mansion to do precisely what Nonmen do -- reflect upon himself.
And because Moenghus had made a
mirror of himself for Kellhus, it allowed Kellhus the opportunity to glimpse the Darkness that Comes Before him, which is very well symbolized when Cnaiur and Serwe approach from behind moments before he uses the Cant of Transposition.
Bonus: The Scylvendi’s swazond are, in fact, an example of what Achamian calls “the crude sorceries used to trap” souls. This is part of what makes Cnaiur so powerful and age-defying. By capturing the raw soul of his victims, he actually makes his own soul stronger.
