Archie @ Salme

Hey! Heard a rumor you were interested in learning to weave gnosis. What specifically do you have in mind? I, for one, would be very curious to see if we can overlap warding circles again with even more types of gnosis, but it feels like there could be a lot more potential applications than that.

Oh! Oh! I have so many ideas for you Archie! Thanks for reaching out. Okay please tell me if the onslaught is too much, but if you haven’t had the chance to review it, there’s one section specifically in the folio on the liminal library that I think you’d find valuable: A History of the Liminal Library: On adding the receptacles of memory. That should direct you to the relevant section, but to complete the library I wove together burning, flourishing, pellucid, and liminal. I can’t remember if I’ve already told you this, but I strongly suspect the only reason I could hold four at once was because I was in the library and I was one of its creators.

That said, I’ve … so. Hm. Okay. I’ve long noticed that the three types of gnosis which are colors (so flourishing, burning, and pellucid) seem to … almost long for each other, for stability? A Sword-Saint long ago figured out that a weave of pellucid, flourishing, and burning could heal the cancer of the world (which you independently confirmed), and … howeverthefuck I sang Tulinsuojat into being on Samudra, it was from burning and flourishing gnosis built off the extant gridwork of pellucid on Samudra. Wolf also noticed, independently, that a stable, complete weave only seems to require the three. Why, I’m not certain.

So it makes me wonder … if that’s the case, what’s left over? Do tenebrous, radiant, and liminal work together in a similar way? To they work together in a similar way but to different ends?

I think I would try weaving the three color-strands of gnosis and then the three non-colors first, trying to accomplish the same task, and to see if there is a meaningful difference in the outcome? And then I’d want to try and see if a weave of any random three is … if the set of the colored strands being stable together just makes it easier or if there’s something more?

I’ve also been working at learning to physically weave, on a loom. Once I am much better at it, I am thinking I could try to string my loom with gnosis itself and see if I can hold more types all on my own? But I’m … much better doing gnosis-work if I have a tactile object to work with as well. For instance, when Caion taught me how to make Bubbles and how to join a Circle, he was able to translate the process into … how one might knot and work thread? I practiced with a physical thread a lot to refine my technique.

A lot of interesting thoughts here! I think there’s a lot of possible combinatioms worth trying. It could be that radiant and tenebrous gnosis form a pair rather than a triad, with liminal being either its own separate thing or perhaps the glue that refines and binds together all five.

Do you think you had more success in the Library because it was your own domain or because of some inherent property of the Library itself?

Respect for learning the craft of weaving! Having a physical aid may well help, especially if you think of it as using different thread for vertical and horizontal stitches. I’m so used to just thinking things into being, though it’s much harder outside of Samudra. Splitting my mind to call on multiple types of gnosis at once may be a tall order, but I should be able to manage it for something simple. It also occurs to me that we have a group of six and there are six types of gnosis - it might be worth seeing what happens when all of us each focus on just one type of gnosis each.

Yeah I think those are also very possible combinations too, though. Hm. Perhaps this will sound strange, but I don’t particularly understand the distinction between radiant and tenebrous at all times. I think the reason why I want to include liminal there is partially that? And partially to mirror the color-strand gnosis weaves. I do think all five (six?) woven together might even be enough to let us perform a miracle, but that’s something else entirely.

Hm, that’s a good question re: the library. I don’t … think of it as my domain insomuch as … it wanted to be completed? It was made as an act of care for a purpose, and I was the vehicle for enacting that purpose? But I do think the library has its own properties that make such workings much easier than they’d be elsewhere.

And I do agree about the six of us—I think any experimentation should involve holding a single type of gnosis per person before anything else is attempted.

It’s interesting you feel like you struggle to see the difference between radiant and tenebrous gnosis because to me they seem the most diametrically opposed. Radiant gnosis is all about community and the greater good, tenebrous gnosis is self-centered. What makes you feel like it’s not that simple?

I feel pretty good about at least trying with flourishing, burning, and pellucid gnosis. What do you say we get Wolf involved? He can handle flourishing gnosis, I’m trained with pellucid gnosis, and you seem to have a pretty good handle on burning gnosis.

It feels to be that at their best and their worst they flow into each other, I think? Take your framing about community and the greater good. Who decides what’s “the greater good”? You didn’t see this (thank the Light; I don’t know if you’d have ever been able to trust me) but initially, when I first spoke with Awa and Aury about the cycles of Almachadta, one of the reasons we fought was because I couldn’t decide if I should try to break the cycles or not.

The thing about the Mask is that it is certain, through repeated, harrowing experience, that the cycles cannot be changed. Any attempt to so change it only harms, only compounds the horror of an already horrible thing. I had always thougt the cycles were the best possible version of the world and I was concerned that trying to change it would lead to oblivion. If I hadn’t … my decision to try to change it was, ultimately, a self-interested one. If I hadn’t … would consigning an entire world to death for the guarantee of knowing another one would rise be the greater good? Certainly for that of the new world. Less for that of the old, I think.

Perhaps it’s mostly that our self-interest has generally served the greater good as well (as we, as our community of weirdos, have defined it) but I also think of Awa, who is tenebrous to his core, self-interested, ambitious, and utterly devoted to making things better. He carries a kind of love for every living thing that I find admirable and terrifying, because he also is willing to use his own life to fuel his desire to change things for the better. It seems as if you could call that either radiant or tenebrous to me, I think, or perhaps the union of the two?

And maybe that’s why I want to add liminal to the mix? Because liminal collapses boundaries and borders. It challenges, and I think … I like the idea that these are diametrically opposed being challenged.

Er, that’s a lot. Also keep in mind on Almachadta … well, it might be different for Wolf, but where I grew up we received no formal instruction in gnosis really? I use tenebrous to strengthen my knife when butchering an animal, and radiant to stretch an animal skin to cure it for parchment. It’s hard to attribute … value there.

Anyway yes, I’d be happy to try some experimentation with gnosis weaving. Flourishing or Burning would work for me.