[Cüréthañ]

The relative power of the gnosis lies in its abilities to smash anagogic analogies using logic - but this is mainly in the context of war cants.  They simply have a better argumentative framework.

Psukhe seems to be in between, probably because the cish are always 'open to the outside'.

Malowebi has clearly superior cants of calling using artefacts - he doesn't need location.  Mallahet also displayed vastly superior cants of calling (compared to Akka) in TDTCB.

[Madness]

I'm very interested in Malowebi's Fetish-based Anagogis.

[Wilshire]

The relative power of the gnosis lies in its abilities to smash anagogic analogies using logic - but this is mainly in the context of war cants.  They simply have a better argumentative framework.

Psukhe seems to be in between, probably because the cish are always 'open to the outside'.

Makes sense

Malowebi has clearly superior cants of calling using artefacts - he doesn't need location.  Mallahet also displayed vastly superior cants of calling (compared to Akka) in TDTCB.

I'll give you Malowebi, disagree on Moenghus though.
He simply sent dreams to every person he could think of. It seems reasonable to me that most of the higher ups slept in the same chambers all the time. This explains why Kellhus didn't actually receive the dreams, since he was more of an inniciate and may not have been sleeping somewhere that Moe could have found.
We see Akka wonder through many dreams, he could have passed a short message to all of them before he made it to his goal. He simply chose to wait to speak with his former master before anyone else.
Vastly superior? Nah.

[Triskele]

I am assuming that Curethan was talking about how Mallahet basically used sorcery to create Skyping between Skauras and Xerius. 

That would be another sweet scene for our artists in the other thread.

[Cüréthañ]

Yep, thx Trisk.

[Wilshire]

Oh the whole floating head thing. IMO something else entirely, not really a cant of calling at all, but I can see why some would.

[locke]

He simply sent dreams to every person he could think of. It seems reasonable to me that most of the higher ups slept in the same chambers all the time. This explains why Kellhus didn't actually receive the dreams, since he was more of an inniciate and may not have been sleeping somewhere that Moe could have found.

Again the dreams had come.

Vast landscapes, histories, contests of faith and culture, all glimpsed in cataracts of detail. Horses skidding to earth. Fists clenching mud. Dead strewn on the shore of a warm sea. And as always, an ancient city, chalk dry in the sun, rising against dun hills. A holy city . . . Shimeh.

And then the voice, thin as though spoken through the reed throat of a serpent, saying, “Send to me my son.”

The dreamers awoke as one, gasping, struggling to wrest sense from impossibility. Following the protocol established after the first dreams, they found each other in the unlit depths of the Thousand Thousand Halls.

Such desecration, they determined, could no longer be tolerated.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (pp. 4-5). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Moenghus sent continual information.  Information either Kellhus was not privy to, or that Kellhus discarded out of his self-flattering egotism.  But considering just how much of an info dump the dreams seem to have been, I'm guessing that the non-guardian class dunyain (Kellhus is a guardian, a warrior), did not discard all the information of the dreams as noise.  Presuming the Dunyain understood the dreams, they may have acted upon the information dump and destroyed Ishual themselves.


It's worth remembering that Kellhus is prone to discarding anything he doesn't grok as noise and without meaning, inherently beneath his interest, time and attention.  Kellhus constantly throws away extra info or immediately 'mentally rewrites' any scenario where he make an error into a new self-flattering narrative where his error is evidence of his correctness.  because Kellhus' internal narrative is suspiciously that Kellhus is the awesome sauce, incapable of error and of just generally being the awesomest awesome dudiest of dudes, his internal narrative is a justification that his every single move is the most correct the most amazing, the definitely best decision anyone could ever make.  Since his internal narrative is that he is incapable of failure, I find that very very suspicious about just how he was conditioned before he left the Dunyain...  And I wonder just how much those dreams of Moenghus influenced the conditioning he underwent before leaving Ishual.

[Cüréthañ]

Them dunyains... suspicious folks  -.0

Interesting that the dreams were sent to many recipients simultaneously.
Also the snake-y voice?  Perhaps the cish use the sssssnakes for an utteral component 

Makes me wonder about Moe's comment about facility with scrying.  Could he have been observing Kellhus' progress?  From campfires and hearths maybe?

[Madness]

...

Big +1 to your post.

I like that Moenghus would have actually depended on knowing how many times the Dunyain would Dream the dream sequences before the "desecration could no longer be tolerated" .

[Wilshire]

Them dunyains... suspicious folks  -.0

Interesting that the dreams were sent to many recipients simultaneously.
Also the snake-y voice?  Perhaps the cish use the sssssnakes for an utteral component 

Makes me wonder about Moe's comment about facility with scrying.  Could he have been observing Kellhus' progress?  From campfires and hearths maybe?

Hmm maybe 2 utterals make the psuke stronger than the anagogis, but not as strong as the 1 utteral and 1 inutter gnosis?

[Wielokropek]

Them dunyains... suspicious folks  -.0

Interesting that the dreams were sent to many recipients simultaneously.
Also the snake-y voice?  Perhaps the cish use the sssssnakes for an utteral component 

Makes me wonder about Moe's comment about facility with scrying.  Could he have been observing Kellhus' progress?  From campfires and hearths maybe?

The comment about scrying stands out to me for a couple of reasons.

If I'm not mistaken, Kellhus is able to use the metagnostic cant of transposing to get to either places he can see, or places that he knows very well. Furthermore, the cants of calling require that one be familiar with the place the recipient is in, which seems to tie into the whole needing to see the physical place or be familiar with the location before being able to transpose the two grounds. The restrictions about knowing the place could have several implications: needing to hold the spatial and temporal locations of the ground in your awareness to direct an inutteral toward it; and perhaps needing to be familiar with the meatphysical location of the ground, needing to know how the place that is your soul in the outside connects with the place that is that ground in the outside.

There are a couple of things I'm speculating about here: how and whether souls can interact with the metaphysics of the ground, whether there's a difference between soul and ground at all (perhaps not, considering how Kellhus says soul becomes place when we see the cant of transposing), and whether there's a connection between knowing the ground you want to go to and the probability trance.

I think that for Kellhus to know that nothing will interfere with the ground he wants to go to (like a bashrag smashing the ground or Aurang collapsing the floor beneath him), he has to know how that ground will appear in the future, which he may be able to accurately determine with the probability trance. It might also be that the probability trance draws a metaphysical connection between Kellhus' soul and the ground he wants to get to, but I've got no concrete evidence for that.

A lot (perhaps all) of Moenghus' magic that we've seen or that he claims to be capable of might be connected to knowing the ground and its movements, something best done through the probability trance (or the Thousandfold Thought, but I'm still not sure what to make of that). If Moenghus is capable of scrying, how might those skills be enhanced by the probability trance, and how may those enhancements enable him to manipulate Kellhus' journey and domination of the holy war?

The scrying could also be strongly linked to the third sight of the Cishaurim. Even if Moenghus could carry no water, if he made improvements to srcying with the probability trance and he could teach the Cishaurim to better grasp the subtleties of emotion involved in those improvements, then perhaps the Cishaurim weren't able to see Kellhus just because he shone in the third sight, but because his location, his soul, connected to so much ground that they couldn't help but see him. All roads lead to Kellhus.

Another errant thought is that the snakes may facilitate the third sight. We know from Mimara that they're holy, and Moenghus calls them his eyes, so there may be in intimate connection between a Cishaurim and his snakes. If so, then maybe the snakes make whatever sight the Cishaurim have more ... holy? I may have to continue this in Storks, Faith, & Holy Animals.

[Triskele]

The reed throat of a serpent thing could have just been a clue from the very beginning of the series that Moenghus had become Cishaurim.  Nice.

[Madness]

There are a couple of things I'm speculating about here: how and whether souls can interact with the metaphysics of the ground, whether there's a difference between soul and ground at all (perhaps not, considering how Kellhus says soul becomes place when we see the cant of transposing), and whether there's a connection between knowing the ground you want to go to and the probability trance.

Makes me think of:

No thought.

The boy extinguished. Only a place.

This place.

...

A place without breath or sound. A place of sight alone. A place without before or after... almost.

...

And the place where Kellhus had once existed extended an open hand - the blond hairs like luminous filaments against tanned skin - and grasped the knife from stunned space.

I always thought this a fitting metaphor for the subjective feeling in deepening mediation but you make me think it's a cypher for the metaphysics of the narrative.

If Moenghus is capable of scrying, how might those skills be enhanced by the probability trance, and how may those enhancements enable him to manipulate Kellhus' journey and domination of the holy war?

A big ol' +1.

Another errant thought is that the snakes may facilitate the third sight. ... I may have to continue this in Storks, Faith, & Holy Animals.

I like this. I'm sure we have enough evidence for a couple posts. You should keep thinking on it and expose your thoughts.

[Wilshire]

All roads lead to Kellhus.

I think this is basically what the Thousandfold thought is, or at least what it was until Kellhus moved beyond the circumfix.


There do seem to be a lot of connection between the transposition cant and the calling cant, which seems reasonable. It is a good point though that with the scrying cant, both cants are improved. A schoolman could potentially search of the person they want to contact in the physical world before contacting them via dreams. Also, Kellhus could have a current view of exactly where he wants to be by scrying it before he jumps.

[locke]

All roads lead to Kellhus.

I think this is basically what the Thousandfold thought is, or at least what it was until Kellhus moved beyond the circumfix.


There do seem to be a lot of connection between the transposition cant and the calling cant, which seems reasonable. It is a good point though that with the scrying cant, both cants are improved. A schoolman could potentially search of the person they want to contact in the physical world before contacting them via dreams. Also, Kellhus could have a current view of exactly where he wants to be by scrying it before he jumps.

and all roads lead to kellhus line would also explain why Moenghus told him he was the only option.


Anyone remember if Moenghus sings for the scrying or is it entirely inutteral?

might as well look it up myself:

“I have come, Emperor, so you might parlay with another.”

Xerius blinked. “Who?”

For a moment, it seemed the Nail of Heaven flashed from the Cishaurim’s brow.

There was a shout from the blackness of the porticoes, and Xerius raised his hands before him.

Cememketri intoned something incomprehensible, dizzyingly so. A globe, composed only of ghostly trails of blue fire, leapt about them.

But nothing had happened. The Cishaurim stood, as motionless as before. The asp’s eyes glowed like amber coals in the firelight.
Then Skeaös gasped, “His face!”

Superimposed like a transparent mask over Mallahet’s skull-like visage was the face of another, a grizzled Kianene warrior who still bore the desert’s mark on his hawkish features. Appraising eyes peered from the Cishaurim’s empty sockets, and a phantom goatee hung from his chin, braided in the manner of a Kianene Grandee.

“Skauras,” Xerius said. He had never seen the man before, but somehow he knew he looked upon the Sapatishah-Governor of Shigek, the heathen scoundrel whom the Southern Columns had fenced with for more than four decades.

The ghostly lips moved, but all Xerius heard was a far-off voice speaking in the lolling rhythms of Kiani. Then the real lips moved beneath, saying, “Excellent guess, Ikurei. You, I know by your coins.”

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (pp. 154-155). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Mother fucker.  I never realized that Moenghus works sorcery without an utteral component.

He is far beyond Kellhus, methinks.