Hemalurgy reveal?

[UpLifted]

So at the end of AoL, Marsh delivers Spook's book to Marasi, which informs her, as well as Wax and Wayne, of the existence of Hemalurgy. 

I've just been rereading HoA and realized that Sazed wrote about Hemalurgy in the epigraphs of the book. Those epigraphs were part of the books that he left the founders of the new world. So why wouldn't Hemalurgy be widely know about in Era 2 already?  

[Treamayne]

13 hours ago, UpLifted said:

So why wouldn't Hemalurgy be widely know about in Era 2 already

Depends on what you mean by "widely known:"

1. By Era 2, I doubt the number of people who read the actual words of founding is rather low (< 10% I would guess)
   • Compare to "classics" and religious texts IRL
2. Just because people have heard the name "Hemalurgy" doesn't mean they know much about it
   • The Words don't have much detail (they mention steel and pewter spikes, but nothing about how to place them)
   • If the Words of founding had much information, why would it have taken Kelsier and Spook so long working together to figure things out
3. Hemalurgy is extremely difficult (see the bolded section at the end of the excerpt below)

Excerpt from the Words of Founding:

Spoiler

Hemalurgy, it is called, because of the connection to blood. It is not a coincidence, I believe, that death is always involved in the transfer of powers via Hemalurgy. Marsh once described it as a "messy" process. Not the adjective I would have chosen. It's not disturbing enough.
Hemalurgy is of Ruin. It destroys. By taking abilities from one person and giving them to another—in reduced amounts—power is actually lost. In line with Ruin's own appointed purpose—breaking down the universe into smaller and smaller pieces—Hemalurgy gives great gifts, but at a high cost.

In concept, it is a very simple art. A parasitic one. Without other people to steal from, Hemalurgy would be useless.
In Hemalurgy, the type of metal used in a spike is important, as is the positioning of that spike on the body. For instance, steel spikes take physical Allomantic powers—the ability to burn pewter, tin, steel, or iron—and bestow them upon the person receiving the spike. Which of these four is granted, however, depends on where the spike is placed.
Spikes made from other metals steal Feruchemical abilities. For example, all of the original Inquisitors were given a pewter spike, which—after first being pounded through the body of a Feruchemist—gave the Inquisitor the ability to store up healing power. (Though they couldn't do so as quickly as a real Feruchemist, as per the law of Hemalurgic decay.) This, obviously, is where the Inquisitors got their infamous ability to recover from wounds quickly, and was also why they needed to rest so much.
Hemalurgic decay was less obvious in Inquisitors that had been created from Mistborn. Since they already had Allomantic powers, the addition of other abilities made them awesomely strong.
In most cases, however, Inquisitors were created from Mistings. It appears that Seekers, like Marsh, were the favored recruits. For, when a Mistborn wasn't available, an Inquisitor with enhanced bronze abilities was a powerful tool for searching out skaa Mistings.

The art that is unique to Hemalurgy, however, is the knowledge of where to place the spikes.
Each spike, positioned very carefully, can determine how the recipient's body is changed by Hemalurgy. A spike in one place creates a monstrous, near-mindless beast. In another place, a spike will create a crafty—yet homicidal—Inquisitor.
Without the instinctive knowledge granted by taking the power at the Well of Ascension, Rashek would never have been able to use Hemalurgy. With his mind expanded, and with a little practice, he was able to intuit where to place spikes that would create the servants he wanted.
It is a little-known fact that the Inquisitors' torture chambers were actually Hemalurgic laboratories. The Lord Ruler was constantly trying to develop new breeds of servant. It is a testament to Hemalurgy's complexity that, despite a thousand years of trying, he never managed to create anything with it beyond the three kinds of creatures he developed during those few brief moments holding the power.

 

Edited June 10, 2022 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Duxredux]

Yup. What @Treamayne said, in particular what Harmony may have omitted from the Words of Founding is a diagram of Hemalurgic bindpoints. If you don't know spike placement, everything gets much, much harder, especially if you don't have Marsh and his 21 power-granting spike bindpoints willingly cooperating in letting you study him.

It's also possible that Harmony or the Kandra went back and revised the Hemalurgy sections after they saw Spook's experimentations. In his former life, Sazed was very free with information (at least until he stopped preaching religions) and he may not have considered withholding much of what he knew when he remade the world. Hemalurgy in good hands is still messy to use and experiment with, Hemalurgy experimentation in the hands of an organization like the Set is extremely dangerous.

Spoiler

Kelsier and Spook were effectively trying to make a new Hemalurgic construct by getting Kelsier a body, doing something that we've never seen done before. In this, as with other things, Kelsier proved far more capable than TLR and accomplished it in record time if the Southern Scadrian record of when the Sovereign came and set things up is anything to judge.