Magic Pictures: Symbology and Patterns as Focal Converters

[Tempus]

Magic Pictures

Symbology and Patterns as Focal Filters

 
Premise
 
I've never really bought all the talk about the Focus of a magic. Every once and a while a Cosmere terms creeps in from a Brandon interview, and Focus is one of these. He uses the word focus a lot, but only rarely does he talk about it in a Cosmere sense. We've learned some things: metals are a Focus on Scadrial, Commands are a Focus on Nalthis, Aons or shapes on Sel are a Focus, and no one is sure what's going on on Roshar yet.^[1]
 
The more we learned, though, the more I felt our fundamental understanding of what was going on with a Focus was wrong. Especially with metals. First metal was a key, and the sDNA of the Allomancer was what you needed.^[anno] Then metals weren't a focus after all, the molecular pattern of the metal was.^[WoB][WoB] But the mists let you use Allomancy with no metals at all, so where was the necessary pattern? And people started talking about how a Focus was Physical or Cognitive, and no one seems to be able to find the source of that. I can't see any evidence supporting a single realm focus either - Investiture is known to transcend realms itself.^[3]
 
I've been gathering a lot of notes about everything, and I have a lot of theories on em'. I can't share my whole framework of Focuses - not only do I not have all the pieces I want yet, but it's super frickin' long, just for the overview. I'd like to share my notes here on one aspect that I've been talking about on IRC a bunch lately, that is very intriguing.
 
 
Hypothesis
 
The only necessary Focus for any given magic is a pattern.
 
 
Assumptions
 
Gonna lay down some assumptions here first, each one of these is a theory or two of their own, really. But we're gonna roll with it.

• Investiture is a waveform, that gets passed through a Focus to produce a magic effect.^[Elantris]
• A Focus does not filter Investiture like a prism, or a piece of red glass. It modifies the frequency like an AC adapter.^[WoB]
• A Focus exists on a scale of Explicit to Implicit, where implicit basically means more Cognitive visualization. This is not an intrinsic value, it's a descriptor.
• Investiture expands mental capacities, and scales by quantity.^{[Ars Arcanum]} This is different from Mental Speed (zinc).
• Brandon is imprecise in his descriptions on occasion, because he doesn't want to reveal too much about the underlying system.

 

Logic and Evidence
 
I've long been interested in the role of symbols in the Cosmere, and my interest peaked when I found the Word of Brandon that says that symbols are built into his books to help make the magic systems of the Cosmere feel unified.^[4]
 
My theory starts at a bit of a strange place. When Kaladin speaks the third Ideal in Words of Radiance, a large symbol in frost appears around his feet.^[WoR] The glyph is recognizable as the symbol for the Windrunners. That's pretty strange, and convenient, isn't it? That the use of magic should naturally produce readable language. How odd.
 
Of course with a weather eye out for it, I looked for more instances of this. Of which there are plenty. According to one Word of Brandon, the first Aon to be discovered by the first Elantrian, Aon Ehe, apparently appeared on a coal in her fireplace when she was taken by the Shaod.^[WoB] Aon Ehe brings flame. Aons, as we know, eventually became the basis for written language in Elantris. It's also been noted that the constellations are Aons as well.^[Elantris]
 
We're starting to see a link here - symbols appear naturally near magic, and those symbols are often used for language. What other instances do we have of this? The Dahkor monks use a strange magic where the develop bone growths, growths that simulate their alphabet. On Scadrial, the letters they use, the Steel Alphabet, are symbolically attached to each Allomantic metal. On Roshar, as we've seen, the general language of glyphs is associated with both Radiants, Surges, Heralds, it is seen on Shardplates and Shardblades, and burnt in effigy as prayers. In a much more tenuous connection, on Nalthis there is a language of colours.
 
There is a clear link here between magic, symbols, and languages. 
 
The original Word of Brandon led me to believe that this link is causative - people are not developing words in language to describe magic, they are developing language to mirror the magic they see all around them. Indeed, we know that Aons exist independent of mankind.^[WoB] So why do these symbols appear, though? What makes them show up, how are they important?
 
For a long time, we believed that the Focus on Scadrial was metal, on Nalthis it was Commands, and on Sel it was the Aons (or generally form based). Then Brandon swooped in, and said "Sort of, guys, but not really." It turns out, the focus on Scadrial was not a metal - it was the molecular pattern of the metal. And the focus on Sel was really more about programming than form. And Nalthis? We don't need a Word of Brandon to see that if the Focus is Commands, and Commands require spoken words in your native language, that the Mental Command ability of the God King shouldn't work at all. And when Vin and Elend absorb the Mists, they don't need a focus at all, they've got power to spare and it naturally takes the form of the Allomantic powers, as if they already had the focus available.
 
So what's going on?
 
 
Deduction
 
The metals, the Aons, the Focuses as we know them are distractions from the underlying foundation at play here. The true heart of a Focus is that it takes Investiture, and changes the frequency of it to a new one. And how it does that is by passing the Investiture through a pattern. These patterns are the true Focus, and are represented by the symbols and glyphs we see the magical effects in nature create.
 
This doesn't mean that the symbols we have are all magical in nature, and putting some Investiture in a Surge glyph would make a fabrial. Instead I suggest what we're seeing is a shadow of the pattern. In the same way as a shadow puppet looks like a rabbit, but our hands do not, we get the appearance of a symbol when certain criteria are met during a manifestation of magic. These are the symbols we know.
 
Now, the idea of a pattern being the focus is strongly supported by the Word of Brandon talking about the molecular pattern of metals. Do we have any other instances where a pattern is mentioned as being very clearly associated with magic? You know I wouldn't ask unless I had something to tell, and I do! In Navanni's notes, she talks extensively about the Stormlight generated pattern of Fabrials, a pattern which is apparently not normally visible.^[link] Each pattern corresponds to a Fabrial usage. Of course as well, let's not forget Sel. All the visible Foci on Sel are drawn like a symbol or pattern. Commands are perhaps linguistic patterns too.
 
Back up the truck! If Commands are linguistic patterns, then Mental Command should be even less possible. Hahah, your arguments are invalid!
 
In every magic system, there are parts of magic that don't seem to require being explicitly focused. And there are parts that do. What's most interesting is that the explicit/implicit requirement seems to shift. Soulstamps must be painstakingly drawn in detail, precisely, to determine the effect. Aons are similar. Awakening doesn't seem to care much at all, as long as you have a strong picture in your head, one or two words will produce extremely complex effects. Allomancy is pretty rigid, each metal does one thing and one thing only. Yet how do Allomancers choose which metal to push on when burning Iron? Burning it doesn't push everything, it just shows some blue lines. And people don't have some kind of built-in sudo-magnetic orfice to use.
 
The answer is that patterns do not require a specific manifestation. The pattern for metal is not required to be in metal - in fact, the entire pattern is not in the metal at all. The necessary patterns can be generated entirely by the mind. We know that Investiture gives expanded mental capacity - I'll write up the full theory about that sometime. It's this ability that allows people to substitute mental patterns to supplement the physical ones.
 
It is these mental patterns that allow the illusion Aons to have so much detail compared to the symbol. It is these mental patterns that let a coinshot choose what to push. These are the patterns that let an Awakener use only a few words instead of the long paragraphs Brandon originally envisioned.^[anno] And it's this mental capacity increase that explains the Heightenings. As the Investiture increases, the mental capacity increases, and the ability to create mental patterns as a Focus increases. First they gain instinctive basic Awakening Commands. Then they discover other Commands easier. Then they gain instinctive understanding of other Commands, learn to Command newer and more complex things, Command from a distance, and finally they do not even need to speak, they can Command with their mental patterns alone.
 
This exposes the true nature of the Focus as we seem them - metal, Commands, etc, they are naturally occurring instances of the pattern (or a portion of the pattern) needed to Focus the Investiture in a given way. They're crutches. The more mental capacity a magic user has, the easier it is for them to dispose of the crutch and use their mind instead.
 
It's quite plausible that we've seen this in another instance from the God King. When Vin and Elend absorb the Mists, they gain a massive amount of Investiture, and no longer need metals to Focus the power they gain from Preservation. The facility of Surgebinders in using their powers in a variety of unique and odd methods may also be an instance of this - they ingest Stormlight, show expanded mental capacity when doing so, and have an extreme level of flexibility in the use of their Surges compared to other rigid systems such as Allomancy. It's notable that Fabrials are not nearly so flexible with their use of Surges.
 
 
Conclusion
 
For those who thought this theory was far too long to read, here's the tl:dr;

• A Focus is actually fundamentally a pattern
• The known Focus (metals, Aons, etc) are an already existing instance or partial instance of the needed pattern, and are simply ways to express that pattern easier
• With enough mental capacity, the pattern can be generated entirely mentally
• The natural symbols observed in magic are the shadows cast by the pattern of the Focus

 

Extrapolations
 
This theory is pretty interesting in that extrapolating it is cool. It suggests that, if you could make a person hold a lot of Investiture, such a person could use their magic mentally - an Elantrian could use an Aon without drawing it. In addition, it suggests that mental capacity is essential for using magic with more fine control and finding esoteric skills, such as the ability of a coppercloud to shield emotions.
 
Furthermore, it suggests that people with Shardic levels of Investiture can create powers outside of the known and expressed Foci - thus why Preservation-level power has no problem moving a branch (or a planet) with magic, but the Lord Ruler is limited to pushing on metals. 
 
And for technology...
 
Lots of fun stuff implied here, but I'll leave all that for another day!
 
 

Quotes and References:

Chaos:
 
Some backstory: In my own discussion with Brandon (from 2009, I believe), he said that Aons are the focuses for AonDor, metal is the focus for the Metallic Arts. Those are sort of no-brainers. But then he surprised me, and said that the Commands are the focus in Warbreaker. At the time, I had guessed color, so that revelation blindsided me.

 

Allomancy is the most common of the three. It is end-positive, according to my terminology, meaning that the practitioner draws in power from an external source. The body then filters it into various forms. (The actual outlet of the power is not chosen by the practitioner, but instead is hardwritten into their Spiritweb.) The key to drawing this power comes in the form of various types of metals, with specific compositions being required. Though the metal is consumed in the process, the power itself doesn’t actually come from the metal. The metal is a catalyst, you might say, that begins an Investiture and keeps it running.

 

Q:  What is the realmatic composition of Investiture?
A:  Investure is intended to be the building blocks of the Cosmere so I would say for the most part it transcends the different realms. Probably more of the spiritual if anything but more accurately it transcends them.

Q: In all of your books—except for Warbreaker—there's always a very big symbology to the types of magic systems: like with AonDor with the Aons or Allomancy. Is that intentional, is it something you had in your head before you get started, or afterwards?
 
Brandon's understanding of the Q: Is the symbolism, the symbology, the actual symbols in the books, important? The magic systems, a lot of these have these- Is this something that I did intentionally?
 
A: Yes it is. When I built the cosmere, I built the underlying rules of magic that I would use in all the books to sort of give a cohesion and- not every one of these books it's going to be very obvious—there will be different takes on them—but for a lot of them they're sharing these attributes, and you can notice similarities between them. Because when I eventually do cosmere-centric books, I want, you know, Allomancy and AonDor to share things in common so it doesn't feel like everything in the kitchen sink is thrown into a book: that there are underlying reasons and rules and things like that.

 

Edited June 26, 2014 by Tempus

[skaa]

First of all, I wholeheartedly agree that the pattern represented by a Focus is what matters. I think Kurkistan, our self-proclaimed resident expert on forms (of which patterns are an example), will agree as well.

My only (very minor) issue, I guess, is that you missed the opportunity to link this concept of patterns with the idea of Intent. In my understanding of Realmatic Theory, an Intent must always be defined first before Investiture can be used. One way to do this is via the pattern found in a Focus (something I mentioned in my Realmatic Theory thread, though I phrased it as "mapping the Intent to an attribute of a Focus").

I believe that Shards and other highly-Invested beings can specify an Intent just by thinking about it, so a pattern is no longer necessary in that case because the Intent is defined directly from a Shard's mind. A Focus is just a way for weaker beings to be able to specify an Intent for Investiture, or at least a way to reinforce their mental Intent (as in the case of Awakening, for example).

Edited June 26, 2014 by skaa

[Ashiok]

lemme see... So would this mean that after becoming a Savant, and more familiar with the metal patterns, you could burn Iron to use it like steel?

[Tempus]

As for Intent, I wanted to work it in, as well as several other Focus things I'd been picking at, but it got too long, far too long. Scrapped that, made the article more.... focused. =D

 

 

lemme see... So would this mean that after becoming a Savant, and more familiar with the metal patterns, you could burn Iron to use it like steel?

 

 

No, this doesn't have anything to do with being a savant. It also doesn't imply that you could use Iron like Steel - there's still a genetic component.