Spiritual Aspects and the Importance of A "Broken Soul"

[Aonar]

Some discussion on my other theory from a few days ago got me thinking about this. Specifically, what exactly constitutes a “broken soul” and what the importance of it is in using Investiture. 

 
Spoilered to save space.

 

What We Know About Snapping and "Broken Souls"

Now, we know from WoB that a broken soul is required in allomancy: 

KCHAN
How does Snapping work after Sazed changed it? If you don't want to reveal it all right now, are there any hints you can give us?

BRANDON SANDERSON
He couldn't get rid of this entirely. I don't want to spoil things, but Snapping was built into Allomancy primarily because of larger-scale magical issues. This is getting deep into the issue, but it has to do with a person's spiritual makeup and a 'wounded' spirit being easier to fill with something else, kind of like a cut would let something into the bloodstream. Sazed made this threshold on Scadrial much easier to obtain.

 
and in surgebinding:

It is the nature of the magic. A broken soul has cracks into which something else can be fit.  Surgebindings, the powers of creation themselves.  They can brace a broken soul; but they can also widen its fissures.

But what exactly does that mean? In the annotations, it clarifies the Snapping mechanism slightly with this quote:

Suffice it to say that there are people who have Snapped because of intense joy or other emotions. It just doesn’t happen as frequently and is more difficult to control.

 
This just seems to raise more questions than answers though, as it wouldn’t be logical to call profound happiness “soul breaking.”

 

My Interpretation of Snapping:

However, there is another way to interpret this phrase. Speaking in Realmatic terms, everyone in the Cosmere has a Spiritual Aspect, which has been theorized to be what in essence defines who someone is (this likely contains things like Identity and Spiritwebs). This Aspect could be thought of as someone’s soul. Now, in this case, a “broken” soul could be a Spiritual Aspect that has been greatly and irrevocably altered by some event.
 
I would theorize that this makes it more malleable, and able to accept foreign (as in non-innate) Investiture. This manifests as things like Allomancy and Surgebinding. In allomancy, this allows Mistings and Mistborn to use their own Innate Investitiure to burn metals and then use the power given to them by doing so. In surgebinding, a broken soul is required to form a Nahel Bond with a spren, which gives control over certain surges and the ability to hold Stormlight. I suspect that the reason we've only seen the "broken soul" requirement in Allomancy and Surgebinding is because of how the different magic systems use Investiture.

 

Other Magics in the Cosmere and Snapping:

 

Like I said above, I think that Snapping is only necessary when you are gaining foreign Investiture in the process. In Feruchemy, one is only ever using power that they already posses, and as such do not need to have their Spiritual Aspect altered in any way (or if they do it's so slight that it was never recognized as Snapping).

 

It's similar with Awakening, everyone from Nalthis possesses a Breath from birth, so there isn't any reason why their soul would need to be "broken" to make room for new Investiture. Instead, I think that rather than Snapping, each additional Breath "stretches" their Spiritual Aspect slightly, and doesn't require Snapping like we see on Scadrial. This could also go a ways towards explaining the disorientation experienced when gaining many Breaths at once, since it forces a rapid expansion of their Spiritual Aspect. However, with Returned I do think that they would have to go through a process akin to Snapping to gain a Splinter of Endowment, but honestly, I would think that dying would be life changing for pretty well anybody.

 

Forgery doesn't require a broken soul because it's practitioners never actually channel the Investiture themselves at any time. The Seal itself calls and guides the Investiture.

 

Hemallurgy works a little differently, as it changes the Spiritual Aspect through brute force, circumventing the need for something like Snapping.

 

From what we've seen of Dahkor, the whole process to gain the power seems painful enough in itself to change someone's Spiritual Aspect. (This does make me wonder who the first Dahkor monk was; with no one to preform the ceremony how would they have gotten their abilities?)

 

For AonDor, I think that the Shaod must be both what Snaps Elantrians and gives them their powers; we know that the Mists could add Investiture to some lesser allomancers: 

There are a lot of people out there, however, with something more like 20% to 30%. These are the people the mists are Snapping—since the mists are, themselves, partially the power of Preservation, they can touch people and increase their Allomantic potential slightly and then bring it to the forefront.

 

The Shaod however is never described as being painful, those who are taken simply go to sleep and then wake up as Elantrians. What I'm thinking is that the change involved with using AonDor might be very small, much like how Snapping is on post-Ascension Scadrial. The reason this could be possible is because of Elantris's effects as an amplifier; without it Elantrians really have very little power. So their Spiritual Aspect doesn't need to change much to use their abilities, but once it has changed, the giant Aon Rao of Elantris then boosts their power up to the level we see.

 

For those of you who don't feel like reading the block of text above, (I don't blame you, it ended up way bigger than I expected it to be) the gist of it is that I think Snapping is a fundamental change of one's Spiritual Aspect, which allows them to use a Shard's Investiture. 

 

(Please excuse me if any of this doesn't make sense, I started thinking about this kind of late at night, and I wanted to post it before I forgot any bits of it.)

 

Edit: I added some new speculation from the posts below.

Edited March 23, 2014 by AonarFaileas

[Delightful]

Your interpretation sounds pretty plausible to me.

 

About AonDor - I don't think we know enough about people who become Elantrians (I forget the proper terminology) to say. You could hypothesise that Galladon has a broken soul because of his father dying, not being a normal Duladen guy etc. And Raoden might have a broken soul from always disgreeing with his father...or maybe from the joy of marrying Sarene. Hmmm and maybe Dilaf can access Dakhor because of the bone-disfiguring process of becoming a monk would be horrifying enough to make someone snap. Which then makes me wonder why Hrathen couldn't use it - unless he had the ability to but not the training because he left before that. Not sure if this is making sense.

 

The joy thing is interesting. It suggests that it's not just horrible *breaking* per se that makes room for Investiture, but rather some kind of life-changing incident in general.

[bartbug]

For Elantris: Think Shaod.

I mean, SPOILERS we know that it is a two part process, and without the second part, it basically turns you into a zombie. The first part of the shaod is what breaks the soul, and the second magickifies it.

[Oudeis]

A lot of very interesting thoughts. Well-supported, and I like it a lot. Many people who come up with theories this involved will post a link to it in their signature; you may wish to do the same here.

 

A few thoughts: I think you're mostly right about feruchemy. Almost all the raw power comes from yourself, but I think you do need just the smallest touch of adjustment to your spiritweb to gain the ability to transfer it. As opposed to allomantic Snapping, I wouldn't be surprised if this is such a "low power" change that almost everyone experiences something as traumatic as a stubbed-toe by the time they learn to talk.

 

As for AonDor, I'm slightly alone on this one in thinking that it once worked very, very differently. I think it used to be a lot like forging, where anyone could draw things and it would happen, but it was far weaker than it currently is, and no one could draw just by moving their finger in the air. I think the people constructed Elantris specifically to cause the Shaod to happen, to concentrate the power everyone had into a select few, a few who would get a few ancillary benefits, who would be able to access the Dor just by drawing in the air, and who would have a strength to their Aons unheard of before. I think these original people somehow left (perhaps related to Devotion and Dominion's splintering?) and when new people arrived and became "of Arelon" the Shaod started targeting them.

 

But that's actually a bit beside my main point; the point is, I think it might take a slightly broken soul to be a candidate for Shaod, but the way the Mists would deliberately Snap people, I suspect that the Shaod is a process that does break your spiritweb in the process of turning you into an Elantrian.

 

As for Nalthis... who knows? Perhaps part of the Heightenings comes from the fact that all that Breath does, in fact, force cracks in your Spiritweb, but enough Breath will fill those cracks with new abilities?

 

Just one man's opinion.

[PorridgeBrick]

A lot of very interesting thoughts. Well-supported, and I like it a lot. Many people who come up with theories this involved will post a link to it in their signature; you may wish to do the same here.

 

A few thoughts: I think you're mostly right about feruchemy. Almost all the raw power comes from yourself, but I think you do need just the smallest touch of adjustment to your spiritweb to gain the ability to transfer it. As opposed to allomantic Snapping, I wouldn't be surprised if this is such a "low power" change that almost everyone experiences something as traumatic as a stubbed-toe by the time they learn to talk.

 

As for AonDor, I'm slightly alone on this one in thinking that it once worked very, very differently. I think it used to be a lot like forging, where anyone could draw things and it would happen, but it was far weaker than it currently is, and no one could draw just by moving their finger in the air. I think the people constructed Elantris specifically to cause the Shaod to happen, to concentrate the power everyone had into a select few, a few who would get a few ancillary benefits, who would be able to access the Dor just by drawing in the air, and who would have a strength to their Aons unheard of before. I think these original people somehow left (perhaps related to Devotion and Dominion's splintering?) and when new people arrived and became "of Arelon" the Shaod started targeting them.

 

But that's actually a bit beside my main point; the point is, I think it might take a slightly broken soul to be a candidate for Shaod, but the way the Mists would deliberately Snap people, I suspect that the Shaod is a process that does break your spiritweb in the process of turning you into an Elantrian.

 

As for Nalthis... who knows? Perhaps part of the Heightenings comes from the fact that all that Breath does, in fact, force cracks in your Spiritweb, but enough Breath will fill those cracks with new abilities?

 

Just one man's opinion.

Don't worry, you're not alone in thinking that way about AonDor. That seems to me to be the most logical possibility for how AonDor works too.

What if in Nalthis, you're Snapped from birth? Since you can break off parts of your soul and give them to someone else, that suggests that their soul is already full of cracks/highly malleable.

Also, @OP: I don't think Hemalurgy is at all an exception to Snapping. In fact, it should rather be the prime example of how it works. The spike itself is driving a wedge into the Spiritweb and leaving a hole for the foreign Spiritweb fragment to enter. It's manual Snapping, ala the mists and the Shaod if Darnam is correct. And because the foreign Spiritweb fragment isn't enough to fill that hole, possibly from hemalurgic decay, the Spiked becomes more vulnerable to foreign Investiture forcing its way in like Emotional Allomancy.

[Aonar]

@Delightful: I didn't even think of Dahkor, that's a good point about that. Although in Dilaf's case, his soul could have been already broken, as we know his wife being improperly healed by the Elantrians was very traumatic for him.

 

@Darnam: Thanks. That's some really interesting speculation on Arelon's history, and it could well be the Shaod itself that Snaps Elantrians; we know that the Mists added Investiture to some lesser allomancers (I did lots of Snapping research ), but something I'm thinking is that the change involved with using AonDor might be very small, much like how Snapping is on post-Ascension Scadrial. The reason for this is because of Elantris's effects as an amplifier; without it Elantrians really have very little power. So their Spiritual Aspect doesn't need to change much to use their abilities, but once it has changed, the giant Aon Rao of Elantris boosts their power up to the level we see.

 

With Breaths, I think that rather than Snapping, each additional Breath "stretches" their Spiritual Aspect slightly, and doesn't require Snapping like we see on Scadrial. This could also go a ways towards explaining the disorientation experienced when gaining many Breaths at once, since it forces a rapid expansion of their Spiritual Aspect.

 

@Porridge: I actually agree with you about Hemalurgy, it manually cracks someone's soul, removing the need to Snap to use the granted abilities. Nalthians could definitely have naturally more malleable souls, this would help with the "stretching' idea above. 

 

I think I'm going to need to edit the OP, there's lots of stuff that I'd like to add now.

 

Edit: The OP has been edited.

Edited January 25, 2014 by AonarFaileas

[QuantumHarmonix]

Thinking about how this would apply to surgebinders. First it seems like there would have to be an event that opens their spiritweb and drives them to take actions that attract a spren.

I'm guessing for Kaladin that was the death of his brother, and the subsequent recruitment and protection of soldiers that reminded him of Tien.

 The attracted spren is then able to fill that crack in their soul, and grant surgebinding powers in the process. Then when they realize an ideal of their order the crack is widened, which would allow more power to fill the crack. 

Which would explain the extra power Kaladin exhibited when he realized the Second Ideal of the Windrunners.

[Aonar]

Pretty well, yeah. The original "crack" would allow the spren to form a bond, then each additional Ideal forces the crack wide enough to accept more Investiture. It was actually a discussion about how spren bonds form that lead to me trying to find and explain a corollary to Snapping (or the lack of one) in all the magic systems we've seen.  

 

Oh and by the way, the nice thing about the Cosmere Theories board is that you don't have to use spoiler tags for anything.

 

I just wanted to make my theory look a little less intimidating.  

Edited January 26, 2014 by AonarFaileas

[Swimmingly]

What about feruchemy, then?

[PorridgeBrick]

What about feruchemy, then?

 

Feruchemy doesn't seem to require much foreign Investiture. As I see it, the only Investiture needed is just a Spiritual "bag" inside the metalmind to hold the stored trait in. While Snapping is likely required like any other magic system, the scale of the Snapping to receive such a small amount of power is just too minimal and common to be noticed.

[Shardbearer]

 This is something I've been musing on since we got that WoR back flap. I think that every world has at least one magic system that requires a broken soul:

 

Sel: Raoden's strained relationship and the loss of his mother can definitely be considered as a broken soul, so I think this is a requirement for the Shaod.

 

Nalthis: Everyone has breath, so I think it's returning that requires brokenness. Given that you have to die to Return, I'd say this easily qualifies for most people, unless you die at peace or whatever.

 

Scadrial: Snapping, obviously. And maybe you can't have something hemalurgically spliced from/to your soul without a break? When you splice two plants together, you have to cut them and tie them together with the wounds touching.

 

Roshar: Surgebinding, as we can see from the back flap.

 

We don't know enough about the other major shardwords to guess at them.

[Moogle]

And maybe you can't have something hemalurgically spliced from/to your soul without a break? When you splice two plants together, you have to cut them and tie them together with the wounds touching.

 

I imagine having a spike rammed into/out of your heart deals enough trauma to cause a break on its own. I am less sure on receiving a spike. It could be the whole spiking process is needed to break the soul! Even if it's not, people on Nalthis can receive Breaths regardless of whether their soul is broken in some way. I believe the most common theory in regards to this is that everybody's spirit-web on Nalthis has a little loose bit corresponding to their Breath, so they are sort of born broken.

Edited January 28, 2014 by Moogle

[Elementalist]

I imagine having a spike rammed into/out of your heart deals enough trauma to cause a break on its own. I am less sure on receiving a spike. It could be the whole spiking process is needed to break the soul! Even if it's not, people on Nalthis can receive Breaths regardless of whether their soul is broken in some way. I believe the most common theory in regards to this is that everybody's spirit-web on Nalthis has a little loose bit corresponding to their Breath, so they are sort of born broken.

I don't think that this is limited to Nalthis. The breaking of the soul might not have to be emotional. While this is one method, another is the manual grafting of new parts onto the soul- the transferrence of Breath and the addition of a Hemalurgic spike geing prime examples.

[Shardbearer]

Well, getting hit with a spike is a physical injury. It's possible that it wouldn't have any spiritual effect on someone with a healthy soul, especially if the act of getting spiked is not traumatic. For instance, most people would not be traumatized by having an earring pierce their lobe, so that wouldn't damage your soul.

 

And with Nalthis, I don't think normal BioChroma requires having a broken soul. Only Returning seems to fit the bill.

[Elementalist]

Well, getting hit with a spike is a physical injury. It's possible that it wouldn't have any spiritual effect on someone with a healthy soul, especially if the act of getting spiked is not traumatic. For instance, most people would not be traumatized by having an earring pierce their lobe, so that wouldn't damage your soul.

And with Nalthis, I don't think normal BioChroma requires having a broken soul. Only Returning seems to fit the bill.

Hemalurgy does two things to you- it either rips off a piece of your soul or stitches a piece of someone else's soul onto you. In my opinion, either is a definite example of a "broken" soul. With Breaths, you are still giving up or taking pieces of other's souls (Breath is a part of one's soul per WoB). It's not as traumatic as Hemalurgy or Snapping since it happens automatically (when you are born with your first Breath), but it still constitutes a form of "breaking" in my opinion.

I think that Allomancy is actually a outlier in requiring emotional breaking. If there was a connection between other magic systems and emotional trauma, I believe that people would have noticed it. More likely, most magic systems break the soul for you before granting you the powers.

EDIT: It might be useful to point out that the breaking of a soul doesn't have to be painful. A broken soul likely won't react exactly the same way as, say, a broken bone (by giving out pain signals).

Edited January 28, 2014 by Power

[Oudeis]

Sel: Raoden's strained relationship and the loss of his mother can definitely be considered as a broken soul, so I think this is a requirement for the Shaod.

 

Meh. "I lost my mom and my dad is distant" is... I mean, obviously less than ideal, but not exactly "irreparable trauma." Every protagonist, antagonist, or half-way interesting minor character will have some kind of sad event in their past. I don't know that this really proves anything. Raoden's father is clearly deeply insane; why doesn't he get magic? Sarene is Teoish, very devoted, and has the lifelong trauma of her bad relationships, punctuated by failed betrothals. Why isn't she taken by the Shaod (for real)?

 

I'm just saying. Sure, everyone who gets magic has had something tragic happen to them. So has... almost every other major character, with or without magic.

[Aonar]

@Power: Like I've said already, I'm fairly sure hemalurgy by its nature forces a change in the Spiritual Aspect. I'm not sure I agree with you about BioChroma though, I think we're thinking along similar lines, but I'm not sure I'd compare it to hemalurgy. Hemalurgy is much more blunt, and causes a lot of damage to the recipient's soul. That's why in my interpretation I used the term "stretching" rather than breaking, to try to differentiate between the two. 

 

A soul breaking isn't in itself painful, and more often than not it doesn't involve any sort of actual physical trauma (Snapping having occurred from intense joy and all that), but the easiest way to intentionally Snap someone is through extreme pain (a la the mists). We know for a fact that surgebinding requires a broken soul, and the quote from our mysterious narrator about "the nature of magic" makes it seem that broken souls are likely required in other systems as well.

 

@Darnam/Shardbearer: It really depends on how much Raoden cared for his mother, and at what age he lost her. Without knowing any of that it's hard to say if his soul could considered broken. As things stand I still like my current theory better, since it's still hard to place soul-breaking incidents with the Elantrians we have met.

Edited January 29, 2014 by AonarFaileas

[Oudeis]

@Darnam/Shardbearer: It really depends on how much Raoden cared for his mother, and at what age he lost her. Without knowing any of that it's hard to say if his soul could considered broken.

 

But you're ignoring my basic point; "something tragic" has happened to almost every major character and an enormous number of minor ones, not just in every cosmere book, but in just about any novel ever written. By this definition, "a broken soul" is more-or-less the baseline for a person living in a novel. It begins to strain credulity that anyone could ever have spent any time unSnapped, if that's all it took.

[Aonar]

That's the thing, "something traumatic" isn't all it takes to Snap. Snapping, by my definition, is an event that completely redefines some part of who you are. Something that irreparably changes (or "breaks," if you prefer) a person's Spiritual Aspect. Naturally, traumatic events are more likely to cause this than events that aren't traumatic. Kelsier is a great example of how this would work; he likely went through a lot of pain and plenty of betrayal during his time as a crewleader, but I doubt that it really had that great of an affect on him as a person. However, after Mare betrayed him, and then was beaten to death right in front of him at the Pits, it really changed who Kelsier was, allowing his allomancy to come through. 

[Oudeis]

That's the thing, "something traumatic" isn't all it takes to Snap. Snapping, by my definition, is an event that completely redefines some part of who you are. Something that irreparably changes (or "breaks," if you prefer) a person's Spiritual Aspect. Naturally, traumatic events are more likely to cause this than events that aren't traumatic. Kelsier is a great example of how this would work; he likely went through a lot of pain and plenty of betrayal during his time as a crewleader, but I doubt that it really had that great of an affect on him as a person. However, after Mare betrayed him, and then was beaten to death right in front of him at the Pits, it really changed who Kelsier was, allowing his allomancy to come through. 

 

I understand what you're saying, but I'm not positive we're not just debating matters of degrees here. Sarene had a moment when she suddenly realized that first engagement was a sham, and that she would never find love, and it changed her life at least as much as Raoden's mother, whom he never mentions, changed his.

 

And my point is simply... these crises of personality are what authors have been giving readers forever. I'm not sure that I buy that "a trait that functionally everyone has" is this super-special thing. What about that random housewife Raoden recruited into New Elantris? Or the spoiled little girl? Did "needing a wig" really fracture her very soul?

[Aonar]

I'm not sure we can really use examples from Elantris. Of all the books, it probably has the magic we know least about, and anyway, the theory I currently have says that the Elantrian version of Snapping is so much less potent than than other magic systems that it almost doesn't play a role. When I made my earlier post I was mostly replying to Shardbearer, since although Raoden could have what can be considered a broken soul, we still don't know enough to say for certain, so I was going to stick with my current theory (and still am). 

 

Snapping most definitely isn't the only factor in gaining magic either. There's all sorts of other contributors that at the moment we're only really guessing at.