Healing with Feruchemy

[Alexmackey23]

Hey all I’m new in the forums and I had a few questions. I was listening to The Final Empire again and a thought came to my head when Sazed is explaining to Vin that he is a Eunuch. In The alloy of law Wayne makes a statement about having fingers blown off and having to grow them back. Now with Sazed being a feruchemist he has the same healing ability as Wayne so if Wayne is able to grow back body parts ie. fingers in this case. Shouldn’t Sazed be able to grow back his male genitalia? Is there something I’m missing that makes it so he cannot. 

[Weltall]

Welcome to the Shard!

Yes, there's a difference between the two and it has to do with how healing in the Cosmere works. In most cases, what happens with healing is that you're taking someone's Spiritual ideal and using it to overwrite their Physical form, healing any damage to the latter because it isn't part of their ideal image. However, the Cognitive aspect of a person acts as a 'filter' on this healing, so if the person consciously or unconsciously perceives something as being a part of themselves, it won't be healed. Wayne doesn't see himself as being fingerless in the same way that Sazed sees himself as being a eunuch, as he's 'always' been one in his mind. Here's a Word of Brandon where he explains this in the context of Stormlight Archive, but it applies to F-Gold and other forms of healing as well.

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So stormlight healing, there's a couple things that have to be considered. But in reference to what you're saying, the person's perception of themselves is a huge part of it.  The way healing works in the cosmere is, you've got the three versions of yourself. You've got the Physical version, the Cognitive version, and the Spiritual version, And a lot of stormlight is taking your Physical version and matching it to the Spiritual version which is your Ideal self.  But it has to be filtered through the lens of your mind.

I almost always--probably should say always--am using it to reinforce some sort of character attribute.  The fact that Lopen never saw himself, even though he only had one arm, as being disabled, as a big influence, versus whether Kaladin deserves his brands or not.  Does that makes sense?  And those are two very different things that influence how the healing works.  And you will see that as a metaphor and theme, if you watch what heals and what doesn't.

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Edited August 30, 2018 by Weltall

[Ashertliden]

Spoiler

Also ya know Sazed's body is kinda vaporized anyway so...

The Hero of Ages Spoiler

[+Invocation]

2 hours ago, A stick said:

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Also ya know Sazed's body is kinda vaporized anyway so...

The Hero of Ages Spoiler

I suppose that would tend to put a damper on things like that, yeah.