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Theory on "Voidbinding" Chart


Bloodfalcon

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Still in early stages of thought on this, but it has been mentioned on a couple threads recently that the symbols on what people have been referring to as the "Voidbinding chart" look like creatures.

I started thinking that maybe instead of creatures, they were actually symbolic of various spren forms. 
This might be the reason that the flag on the cover of WoK is a creature that looks similar to the 4th order symbol on the chart - perhaps that is the spren that the Parshendi bond with to produce their war form? I'm not sure, but if it was an anger spren, which we know is red, it does line up in a way. Also, the lifespren is green, and that is the 5th order on the chart which sits between what is thought to be Light and Growth on Surge chart. It just seems to line up well in my mind. I haven't looked over all of the descriptions and tried to line them up, but we also don't know of all the spren out there, so I'm not sure there could be a definite thumbs up on this even if we tried our best. 

Give it a look!


EDIT: Now I have an even worse theory that goes along with this :P

We had an entire interlude dedicated to showing us that spren qualities can be manipulated, done by writing it down in the interlude. What if the spren characteristics are actually what is denoted on that chart. It is a chart that someone made that says "the creatures that are a combination of these two natural forces look like THIS" and they drew a picture. It's a long shot but it really is fun to think about. 

EDIT 2:  UHHHHH maybe that is the reason that there is a large gem shown with two of the symbols in it? That could represent spren stored in "orbs" OR show how stormlight is stored. I think there might actually be a connection here, whether or not any of this is correct.

EDIT 3: UHHHHH also why there are 2 Larkin seemingly eating one of the orders and storing the others inside of them or something something something. 

EDIT 4: Dang that theory just connected the interlude, both charts, Gavilar's Orb, the Parshendi, and Larkin. 

EDIT 5: I'm going to keep going, because why not?

The two charts are creations of Honor and Cultivation meant to lock down how the powers work on Roshar. Honor's establishes who the owners of each ability/Order are, while the border of Cultivation's chart gives ownership of all the spren to herself/Nightwatcher. That is why the Heralds call Honor Almighty and seem to ignore Cultivation in their concerns, and the spren call Cultivation "Mother" or whatever Wyndel does (Great, now this needs to be moved to Steelhunt). We noticed that the figure has a "safe hand" sort of look going, and I bet that entire tradition comes from this single picture. It may not have even been important to Cultivation, but was picked up in a religious sect (Vorinism) and they just ran with it. Whatever stained glass window Brandon was talking about was not the origin of the chart, it was another representation. That thing is not made from stained glass. It was picked up by the Vorin "church" and represented in holy sites. The stained glass thing was a pseudo red herring. A half truth if you will. 

Edited by Bloodfalcon
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It's hard to say, blood.  I can't really think of anything for or against this really since we know nothing about the chart except that it is a reproduction from an in-world stained-glass window, as per Peter.  I suspect it is voidbinding, but there are a number of puzzling aspects such as the two 'orders' which are not connected to any 'surges'.  Some key features would be that each of the 'surge' symbols demonstrate inverted symmetry.  I also would suspect that the window is found in a Vorin kingdom since the border woman has her safehand concealed.  There is much lightning and smoke.  And that giant red gem slaps you right in the face.  Overall the chart gives a feeling of chaos and violence.

 

I am disinclined to think that the 'order' symbols are meant to be visually representative of the visual appearance of the various bonding spren.  I just don't see the base spren-types as being that complex in appearance.

Edited by Shardlet
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It's hard to say, blood.  I can't really think of anything for or against this really since we know nothing about the chart except that it is a reproduction from an in-world stained-glass window, as per Peter.  I suspect it is voidbinding, but there are a number of puzzling aspects such as the two 'orders' which are not connected to any 'surges'.  Some key features would be that each of the 'surge' symbols demonstrate inverted symmetry.  I also would suspect that the window is found in a Vorin kingdom since the border woman has her safehand concealed.  There is much lightning and smoke.  And that giant red gem slaps you right in the face.  Overall the chart gives a feeling of chaos and violence.

 

I am disinclined to think that the 'order' symbols are meant to be visually representative of the visual appearance of the various bonding spren.  I just don't see the base spren-types as being that complex in appearance.

I'm going to keep editing the main post with crazier theories that just compound on one another until you disprove it with a WoB or something. Pressure's on. Wild claims flying left and right, yo.

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We noticed that the figure has a "safe hand" sort of look going, and I bet that entire tradition comes from this single picture. It may not have even been important to Cultivation, but was picked up in a religious sect (Vorinism) and they just ran with it. Whatever stained glass window Brandon was talking about was not the origin of the chart, it was another representation. That thing is not made from stained glass. It was picked up by the Vorin "church" and represented in holy sites. The stained glass thing was a pseudo red herring. A half truth if you will. 

 

I can't speak as to the rest of the theory, since we have so little information that we're basically down to interpreting how the picture makes us feel :D, but I do know the origins of the safehand.

 

Jon wrote: "My burning question for Brandon is did I miss the explanation, world building moment or historical gem that explains why women have a safe hand and why they must keep it covered?"

No, you haven't missed it. People have asked about this. There will be more explanation in-world as it comes along, but it's for much the same reason that in some cultures in our world you don't show people the bottoms of your feet, and in other cultures showing the top of your head is offensive. It's part of what has grown out of the Vorin culture, and there are reasons for it. One of them has to do with a famous book written by an artist who claimed that true feminine pursuits and arts were those that could be performed with one hand, while masculine arts were those performed with two hands, in a way associating delicacy with women and brute force with men. Some people in Roshar disagree with this idea, but the custom has grown out of that foundational work on masculine and feminine arts. That's where that came from. One aspect of this is that women began to paint one-handed and do things one-handed in upper, higher society. You'll notice that the lower classes don't pay a lot of attention to it—they'll just wear a glove.

As a student of human nature and of anthropology, it fascinates me how some cultures create one thing as being taboo whereas in another culture, the same thing can be very much not taboo. It's just what we do as people.

There's more to it than that, but that will stand for now.

 

The source seems to be private now, but here's the link to the link on Stormblessed.

 

I would guess that the stained glass was created after safehands came about, though it's hard to say. I think that Voidbinding is a 'mirror' of Surgebinding, and that there will be 10 powers, each linked to a Surge (or its opposite?), but I can't say much more than that. We have tales that Voidbinding was an attempt to see the future by some, which I believe is not quite the truth, but is something to go off of. I could see the Transformation Surge's 'void' being something that makes things static, perhaps freezing them in time. Pressure's void would allow you to remove all air and gases from an area, suffocating people, the Friction void might cause you to touch a person and have them collapse as molecules no longer attracted each other. Gravity's void would... let you explode people? Gravity is hard, but perhaps you see where I'm going with this.

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Whatever stained glass window Brandon was talking about was not the origin of the chart, it was another representation.That thing is not made from stained glass. It was picked up by the Vorin "church" and represented in holy sites. The stained glass thing was a pseudo red herring. A half truth if you will. 

 

The rub with this idea is that this did not come from Brandon.  It came from Peter who, to my knowledge, doesn't play Aes Sedai games.

 

 

We noticed that the figure has a "safe hand" sort of look going, and I bet that entire tradition comes from this single picture. It may not have even been important to Cultivation, but was picked up in a religious sect (Vorinism) and they just ran with it.

 

I doubt that such a powerful cultural tradition came from a single picture without having some other background to support it.

 

@Moogle-  I know you're mostly tossing out ideas, but those would make Voidbinding extremely powerful.  Those abilities all have direct offensive implications.  In contrast, none of the KR surges (except for transformation as shown by Jasnah) are directly offensive so far.  In other words you don't kill someone with a lashing, they are instead killed by the fall, etc. 

Edited by Shardlet
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I can't speak as to the rest of the theory, since we have so little information that we're basically down to interpreting how the picture makes us feel :D, but I do know the origins of the safehand.

 

 

The source seems to be private now, but here's the link to the link on Stormblessed.

 

I would guess that the stained glass was created after safehands came about, though it's hard to say. I think that Voidbinding is a 'mirror' of Surgebinding, and that there will be 10 powers, each linked to a Surge (or its opposite?), but I can't say much more than that. We have tales that Voidbinding was an attempt to see the future by some, which I believe is not quite the truth, but is something to go off of. I could see the Transformation Surge's 'void' being something that makes things static, perhaps freezing them in time. Pressure's void would allow you to remove all air and gases from an area, suffocating people, the Friction void might cause you to touch a person and have them collapse as molecules no longer attracted each other. Gravity's void would... let you explode people? Gravity is hard, but perhaps you see where I'm going with this.

Right, I am still trying to map that all out in my head. There is a definite connection between the two charts being that the symbols for surges are just cut down the Y axis and flipped on one side.  The inversion is very similar to that of the maps of Shadesmar and Roshar being inverse land and water. That inversion follows with the change in style on the pictures. Shadesmar is Cognitive -> Spren are Cognitive -> "Voidbinding chart" is Cognitive. It still makes sense to me if it goes with my other theory -

The pictures of Orders on the Surgebinding chart come from the hilts of the Honorblades, which are the Physical aspect. Roshar map is Physical -> Honorblades are Physical -> Surgebinding map is Physical.

Again, trying to piece this all together, but now that that connection is there, I think a lot of this theory is correct and I'm going to run with it.

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Oooh That is a Good question why would a stained glas be made fo voidbinding it seems like anyone who kenw about voidbinding wuld not want to make everyone know that she knew about it so did the stained glassblower know it was a voidinbing graph or did he just do wat he was told hmm I think chuirches when I hear stined glass and what chuch would have stained glass of ULTIMATE EVIL perople hmm?

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@Moogle-  I know you're mostly tossing out ideas, but those would make Voidbinding extremely powerful.  Those abilities all have direct offensive implications.  In contrast, none of the KR surges (except for transformation as shown by Jasnah) are directly offensive so far.  In other words you don't kill someone with a lashing, they are instead killed by the fall, etc. 

 

That's the problem, yeah. I would guess, with the Voidbringers being Odium's, that Voidbinding is Odium's system. From this, I suspect that Voidbinding will be inherently offensive in nature, or more precisely that you have to be a violent person to access it. I don't think the Unmade care about creating barracks from thin air, or all the wonderful things you can do reversing gravity. I would guess Odium hates and loathes everything and just wants to kill and destroy, and his system (or rather, how you access it) will reflect that. This is unfortunate, due to how it makes him somewhat flat as a character, like Ruin. I can deal with that because we get Taravangian out of it, though.

 

This is at odds with how Szeth is a Surgebinder without getting it through a spren. I could be entirely wrong, and Voidbinding is the exact same as Surgebinding, but you get it by doing a perversion or 'void' of the Divine Attributes that would normally attract a spren to you.

 

Ideas are hard, and we have so little to go off of.

Edited by Moogle
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Hahahaha nope, this is mostly right. I'm calling it now. 

More from my deluded mind: The spren symbol at our 5 position is Wyndle. 4 is Ym's spren. 7 is Syl. When we have more information, someone is going to flip the axis of that chart enough times that the surges are all fixed and the spren are in the right positions. I think this will indicate the transition spren make from the cognitive to the physical realms. Something of that sort. Those lines are connections like if you were holding this like an object connected by strings, I imagine, and there are some things that should remain where they are and some things that should rotate. 

I'd like to challenge someone to fix that up somehow, but i'm not sure what the method would be, and again, we are missing a lot of spren to make it fit. 


EDIT: Eh, also very possible 2 is supposed to be Syl, which makes it a more minor change. Things will get flipped though.

Edited by bloodfalcon2
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I've seen several charts with different numbering systems, but I think the accepted way has been with 1 starting at the upper right, with the Windrunner symbol on the Honor chart, and working it's way clockwise. The middle two toward the center are at 5 and 10 if that helps. 

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The Ten Essences table provides many of the unifying factors. The (Alethi?) numbers correspond directly to the Heralds' names, so this is what we use. Jes is the number one, so we give Jezrien 1. 

 

Now I wonder how we are supposed to pronounce Palah... All of the other numbers are "perfect" in their symmetry, which is a perfectly sensible thing for a Vorin culture to do. Palah breaks the paradigm though.

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The Ten Essences table provides many of the unifying factors. The (Alethi?) numbers correspond directly to the Heralds' names, so this is what we use. Jes is the number one, so we give Jezrien 1. 

 

Now I wonder how we are supposed to pronounce Palah... All of the other numbers are "perfect" in their symmetry, which is a perfectly sensible thing for a Vorin culture to do. Palah breaks the paradigm though.

Right. That one is easy, but even still, I have seen others label the "Voidbinding" chart with different numbers, and considering the surges are all whacky and stuff, I wouldn't be surprised if the numbering system did not line up as well for some reason. Inverted in a way, like the surges and the maps and stuff. All that considered, I don't see a reason you wouldn't still number them 1-10 like that for now until there is actual evidence to mess with any of it.

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Now I wonder how we are supposed to pronounce Palah... All of the other numbers are "perfect" in their symmetry, which is a perfectly sensible thing for a Vorin culture to do. Palah breaks the paradigm though.

 

Silent "P"? :D

Edited by Scott
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