[What Came Before]

The beginning of the third quote is talking about Chrorae, yeah?  If so, that seems to confirm or nearly confirm that Cish do not salt like other sorcerers do.

[What Came Before]

Not only that Triskele, but there's a suggestion that if the THOUGHT of the Cishaurim caster is sufficient to encompass the negation of the chorae, then the chorae could be overcome within the frame of the thought.  IN other words a hybrid of aporos and Psukhe that would overwhelm the aporos of the chorae with an inverse-aporos Psukhe thought.

In order to do this, the psukhe user would presumably have to know the inscriptions that define the Chorae.  And then Cnaiur shows up with a chorae that Moenghus probably knows particularly well if he ever looked at it, a perfect setup for him to overcome a very specific chorae--as Kellhus never did, since he was mostly incurious, seemingly, when he examined Cnaiur's chorae.

If Moenghus ever reverse engineered the aporos from examining Cnaiur's chorae before he ever encountered the Cishaurim...

And if it's the Thought that counts in the Psukhe, and note that Bakker doesn't say emotion, then Moenghus could have indeed been very powerful within the magic.

[What Came Before]

And is Psukhe equals psyche then thought seems better than emotion, but if Psukhe equals spirit than it's less clear.

[What Came Before]

I think Cish just use magic in a way that's like a cant of compulsion - the god just thinks it wills it.

Though I think in terms of who are the better guys, the Kianne and the Cish are the better guys. The series is a bit like if the story was told from Saurons side of the deal.

[What Came Before]

I think Cish just use magic in a way that's like a cant of compulsion - the god just thinks it wills it.

Though I think in terms of who are the better guys, the Kianne and the Cish are the better guys. The series is a bit like if the story was told from Saurons side of the deal.

haha yeah ive been getting that feeling lately as well

[What Came Before]

Same here.  I think Meppa is going to be the conduit through which The Solitary God is awoken, and He's going to send an entire ocean of Water through Meppa to destroy Mog.  Meppa is a clue for Mecca which is where the most of the God's Water would be if it was our Middle East.



OK, I don't really believe this will happen, but I also sort of share the "Cish are good somehow" or less bad viewpoint. 

Something about how they were but wiped out and are returning...and how it's been on the periphery...love the idea about story being told from other side.

[What Came Before]

Something about how they were but wiped out and are returning...and how it's been on the periphery...love the idea about story being told from other side.

OK, I'm calling it now. The books making up the third trilogy of tSA will be titled A New Hope, The (Kellian) Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Cishaurim.

[What Came Before]

OK, I don't really believe this will happen, but I also sort of share the "Cish are good somehow" or less bad viewpoint. 

I think you might be onto something here. I concur.

[What Came Before]

Another Cishaurim-related RSB post from Zombie Three Seas that (AFAIK) hasn't yet been reposted here for discussion:

The idea is that sorcery is primarily discursive, and as such, tied to the ability to see (there's a long tradition in continental philosophy critiquing the centrality of visual metaphors in Western philosophical discourse). The psukhe, on the other hand, is primarily emotive. So the idea would be that where sorcery captures fragments of the God's intellect, the psukhe expresses instants of the God's heart. Since the former is cognitive, which is to say, admits of being more or less true, it necessarily falls short. Since the latter is not cognitive, it is indistiguishable from the God's own world.

I'm not sure I like the implication, to be honest. It sort of sounds like RSB is trying to say that emotion is somehow more objective than cognition, but I don't think that makes much sense...

[What Came Before]

Lol, the modern study of emotions practically begins with emotions being specific patterned responses - especially basic ones... biased & heuristic.

I've long +1'd Righteous Cishaurim. Its a tasty perspective - PON becomes Achamian, Cnaiur, and Esmenet at the heart of the First Holy War by the Damned... fighting to damn themselves.

[What Came Before]

I'm not sure I like the implication, to be honest. It sort of sounds like RSB is trying to say that emotion is somehow more objective than cognition, but I don't think that makes much sense...

Hmmm...maybe you can square it by thinking of a world in which The God is real...


Sorcery messes w/ the God's reality, so it can be "wrong" even though is powerful and can be proven false or whatever.

The instances of the God's heart, in this world, are right even if they're accessed by the emotive.

[What Came Before]

PON becomes Achamian, Cnaiur, and Esmenet at the heart of the First Holy War by the Damned... fighting to damn themselves.

By extension, the people of the Great Ordeal fighting for their right to eternal damnation. What a horrible thing to happen, I think its possible. The entire world damned at the hands of the anti-christ.

[What Came Before]

Hmmm...maybe you can square it by thinking of a world in which The God is real...

Sorcery messes w/ the God's reality, so it can be "wrong" even though is powerful and can be proven false or whatever.

The instances of the God's heart, in this world, are right even if they're accessed by the emotive.

That doesn't help, I'm afraid. You're merely begging the question, as far as I can see.

I can sort of see an argument that language is only, at best, a symbolic approximation of reality, while emotion is experienced directly... but that sounds far too vague and superficial for Bakker, as well as not obviously connecting to what he actually said.

Hmm...

The Mark, as I understand it, is caused by the gap between the sorcerer's recollection of God and God's objective nature. A language-based sorcery is like trying to describe a memory in words; it seems obvious that such a description will be incomplete or inaccurate.

The Psukhe, then, is like remembering the emotions that attach to the memory, without any of the niggling 'factual' details.

Let's take the example of one's first kiss. An Anagogic sorcerer would recall it as a series of rather trite similes* ("Hair as black as night", "lips as red as berries", etc.). A Gnostic would recall the girl's vital statistics, the temperature of her skin, and the frequency of her heartbeat (now I'm thinking of this guy for some reason). A Cishaurim doesn't care about all that; he just remembers the emotions he felt.

That all seems to make sense, right?

The problem is that we don't actually recall emotions more objectively/accurately than we do all those other details. The idea that we do is actually just the sort of comforting, feel-good delusion RSB normally disdains.

It's all rather frustrating. :evil:

[size=85]* Yeah, that's right: I'm belittling people who rely on analogies as part of an analogy.[/size]

[What Came Before]

To be honest, Duskweaver, the analogies have always made sense to me. They've just never formed a coherent narrative in my mind until I read the God's Song quote.

And really, though you're analogies expand nicely on the fiction, I still don't really understand how the parts fit some kind of narrative whole.

Especially, linguistic analogies... as all sorceries would then have an inutteral component, which apparently only the Gnosis does - for we always speak with two tongues, one heard in the mouth and another unheard in the mind.

[What Came Before]

which apparently only the Gnosis does [have inutterals]

I don't think this is actually the case. Do you have the quote handy? Because I suspect people have been misinterpreting.