enlightening Realmatic model of Enlightened Surgebinding (what Sja-anat actually does to spren)

[PanLin they/he]

tl;dr:

Sja-anat enlightens spren by giving them a stronger Connection to the spiritual realm. The Radiant powers they grant are therefore filtered through, and strengthened by, the spiritual realm.

 

What does enlightening itself do?

No list of WoBs this time—most of this thinking comes from in-text evidence and the application of wider realmatics to Rosharan concepts.

That said, the wiki excerpts on Sja-anat and spren are interesting:

Spoiler

Sja-anat's touch has the ability to corrupt spren that she comes into contact with, injecting them with Voidlight.^[2][13] Sja-anat refers to this process as Enlightening.^[11] Spren affected by Sja-anat begin to carry the taint of Odium,^[14] and in rare cases can even grant abilities associated with Odium's power,^[15][16] though the extent of his influence on the affected spren is unknown.

 

Enlightened true spren have extra affinity and abilities in the Spiritual Realm that normal true spren lack.^[289][25] Enlightened spren are easily able to navigate the Spiritual Realm, as well as find and move other people or things inside of it.^{[265][289][290]} They can also track down visions that are created.^[291] They are able to make other people appear as the person they are taking over in visions, though they can't also choose which person they get.^{[292][293][137]} They can also alter a vision, removing or resetting certain elements.^[294] If noticed by a Shard, Enlightened spren have difficulty using their abilities.^[295]

So there's in-text confirmation that spren who have been enlightened have a greater affinity (or Connection) to the spiritual realm. 

 

Both of Renarin's surges are enlightened

Many people theorise that when a truespren is enlightened, a Nahel bond with them produces one 'normal' Surge and one enlightened, pointing to Renarin's use of Progression as evidence. It's a convenient way to explain what is apparently happening in-text, but:

• It's not a very satisfying explanation
• It leans into this idea that each radiant order has a 'major' and 'minor' Surge (an idea I've never really subscribed to)
• It assumes that we already know everything we need to (absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence)

Besides, we do have evidence of something unusual with Renarin's Progression: the 'perfected version' that Adolin briefly felt of himself when being healed by Renarin. We've seen this sort of thing before with stuff like Shallan's portraits and A-Gold, but not with any other use of Progression; it can, however, easily be explained if we say that enlightened Progression heals according to one's spiritual self instead of their cognitive. From Oathbringer:

Spoiler

“A pulse of radiance washed through Adolin and for an instant he saw himself perfected. A version of himself that was somehow complete and whole; the man he could be. It was gone in a moment and Renarin pulled his hand free and murmured an apology.”

Progression normally works by changing someone's physical form to match their cognitive form. What if enlightened Progression, filtered through a spren with a stronger Connection to the spiritual realm, changes someone's physical form to match their spiritual form? I'd wager that, for the most part, it wouldn't look any different to onlookers. Hell, most people aren't realmatically aware enough to know how normal Progression works; they just see Stormlight-powered healing and think "magic".

I actually think this might be one of the reasons Truthwatchers are the first enlightened radiants we've been properly exposed to, intentionally using Progression as a sort of red herring to cheekily go "nothing unusual here, no no" before we get some sort of classic Sanderson reveal in the future.

 

I'm still just a rat in a cave

Not to get too distracted (aka my future epitaph), but Plato's Theory of Forms (which has some uncanny overlap with Cosmere realmatics) posits that the physical world is just a shadowy imitation and interpretation of reality, which exists outside of time and space in a realm of pure concepts.

Further, his Allegory of the Cave (it's an interesting read if you're unfamiliar, go read it!) suggests three 'levels' of reality: the shadows on the wall, the people casting those shadows, and the world outside the cave. Most normal people assume the role of someone who has spent their entire life in the cave, viewing the shadows as their entire understanding of reality; seeing beyond those shadows is the first step toward enlightenment (a pure coincidence, I'm sure...).

Applying that to the Cosmere, we can see a very obvious relationship between the three realms:

• Spiritual: actual reality, a realm made purely of Investiture that defines the Identity and Connection of everyone and everything in existence (the real world outside the cave)
• Cognitive: a realm of thought and interpretation that takes the real world of the spiritual realm and gives it context (the people casting the shadows)
• Physical: the world we know, a limited representation of the other realms (the shadows on the wall)

 

Upgrades, people. Upgrades

I bring this all up because I think enlightened spren essentially give access to the same Surges, but literally enlightened in a philosophical sense. The physical and cognitive effects of normal Surges become cognitive and spiritual effects for enlightened Radiants.

Progression, as mentioned above, goes from using a cognitive template to using a spiritual template for healing.

Illumination allows Lightweavers to physically represent cognitive visions; it logically follows that a realmatically 'upgraded' version of that would cognitively represent spiritual visions. This is exactly what we see in Renarin; he glimpses the spiritual realm, which comes hand-in-hand with visions of potential futures. The enlightened version of Illumination isn't simply 'Futuresight', but limited access to the spiritual realm and the cognitive means to understand it, a 2-for-1 combo extremely similar to the atium/electrum alloy from Mistborn era 1.

Below is a table I've put together, extrapolating these concepts to all the Rosharan Surges. I think I'm happy with it, but would love to discuss any parts of it that don't seem right or are just straight up contradicted by the books.

Spoiler

Surge	Radiant ability	Realmatic effect	Potential enlightened effect	Proposed enlightened ability
Illumination	Lightweaving	Projects cognitive concepts into physical space	Projects spiritual concepts into cognitive space	Futuresight, greater spiritual awareness
Progression	Regrowth	Aligns physical form to cognitive	Aligns physical form to spiritual	Personal manifestation (healing toward an 'ideal' self, as seen by Shallan / A-Gold)
Abrasion	Friction manipulation	Manipulates interactions between nearby objects	Manipulates interactions between nearby expressions of Investiture, matter and energy	Manipulation of spiritweb's susceptibility to interference
Division	Disintegration	Gives control over molecular breakdown; adds energy to systems to ignite them	Gives control over breakdown of Identity and Connection	Spiritual severance / disintegration (similar to effects of anti-Investiture / Evil)
Gravitation	Lashings	Rewrites gravitational Connections to spatial trajectories	Lashes spiritwebs to temporal trajectories	Destiny / Fortune manipulation
Adhesion	Pressure manipulation	Creates bonds easily via direct increases of Connection	Creates bonds across realms (perpendicularities)	Connection manipulation
Tension	Stress manipulation	Manipulates internal structures while maintaining a cohesive self	Manipulates rules around spiritweb configuration without changing Identity	Something similar to Soulstamping, but maintains Identity
Cohesion	Matter manipulation	Reshapes matter	Control over matter / energy / Investiture conversion	Fully unbound transmutation
Transportation	Elsecalling	Physical and cognitive traversal	Full realmatic traversal	Free traversal through and across the three realms
Transformation	Soulcasting	Changes cognitive aspect of something, which is refected in its physical	Changes spiritual aspect of something, which is refected in its cognitive and physical	Identity manipulation (could bypass restrictions on keyed Investiture like metalminds)

I also think this is an important step toward answering questions like 'what is Voidbinding' and how both that and enlightened spren are related to the Unmade in general, but I want to get this part really watertight before I do that.

Thoughts / feedback / fun facts / challenges / insults / praise welcome!

[Frustration]

Well there are a few problems with the idea that both surges are altered.

1. Orders do have an affinity for particular surges, following a pattern along the order chart

Spoiler

Overlord Jebus

So I've noticed a pattern in the way that the Radiants learn their surges. They seem to learn their anti-clockwise surge before their clockwise surge?

Brandon Sanderson

They do.

Overlord Jebus

Excellent, everyone thought I was a crazy person!

Brandon Sanderson

They do tend to-- Now, I'm gonna give you some behind the sausage stuff on that. That is partially for writing expediency reasons.

Overlord Jebus

How do you mean?

Brandon Sanderson

I designed that partially because I didn't want to overwhelm people with too many magic systems at once so I came up with a little bit of a pattern so that I could have a little bit of an in-world reason why we were slowing that down. It's not a hard fast rule, it's something that I've kept to in order to not overwhelm readers so it's more of form following function than the other way around.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/256/#e8647

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Mraize as an enlightened Lightweaver could make Illusions just like Shallan could, something Renarin cannot do.

[PanLin they/he]

Yep, valid points, but I think I have reasonable counterpoints.

Firstly, even the WoB you quoted states that the apparent asymmetry of Surges is mostly a story writing decision:

Spoiler

That is partially for writing expediency reasons.

It's not a hard fast rule, it's something that I've kept to in order to not overwhelm readers so it's more of form following function than the other way around.

Secondly, I thought (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that we never explicitly saw Mraize Lightweave?

That said, I'm not one to rely on a cop-out answer, so my real answers are either:

- the idea of a 'major' Surge is dependent on the individual, not the order, and only affects the order in which Surges are raised to their enlightened level

- they were in the spiritual realm, and Mraize and Iyatil having some control over the visions and Shallan's perception while there is arguably more fuel for my theory

- Mraize is an even weirder example than Renarin. If he did use Invested illusions, we can't say for sure it was because of Rosharan Lightweaving

[Frustration]

Just now, PanLin said:

Yep, valid points, but I think I have reasonable counterpoints.

Firstly, even the WoB you quoted states that the apparent asymmetry of Surges is mostly a story writing decision:

  Reveal hidden contents

That is partially for writing expediency reasons.

It's not a hard fast rule, it's something that I've kept to in order to not overwhelm readers so it's more of form following function than the other way around.

Secondly, I thought (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that we never explicitly saw Mraize Lightweave?

That said, I'm not one to rely on a cop-out answer, so my real answers are either:

- the idea of a 'major' Surge is dependent on the individual, not the order, and only affects the order in which Surges are raised to their enlightened level

- they were in the spiritual realm, and Mraize and Iyatil having some control over the visions and Shallan's perception while there is arguably more fuel for my theory

- Mraize is an even weirder example than Renarin. If he did use Invested illusions, we can't say for sure it was because of Rosharan Lightweaving

He made Iyatil look like Formless, and created the illusions that let the Ghostbloods look like the guards before they got sent to the SR. And his anti-stormligh dagger caused Distortions in his illusion. So it wasn't just then being in the SR as he did it in the Cognitive as well, and anti-stormlight reacted to it

[Trusk'our he/him]

20 hours ago, PanLin said:

Yep, valid points, but I think I have reasonable counterpoints.

Firstly, even the WoB you quoted states that the apparent asymmetry of Surges is mostly a story writing decision:

  Hide contents

That is partially for writing expediency reasons.

It's not a hard fast rule, it's something that I've kept to in order to not overwhelm readers so it's more of form following function than the other way around.

Secondly, I thought (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that we never explicitly saw Mraize Lightweave?

That said, I'm not one to rely on a cop-out answer, so my real answers are either:

- the idea of a 'major' Surge is dependent on the individual, not the order, and only affects the order in which Surges are raised to their enlightened level

- they were in the spiritual realm, and Mraize and Iyatil having some control over the visions and Shallan's perception while there is arguably more fuel for my theory

- Mraize is an even weirder example than Renarin. If he did use Invested illusions, we can't say for sure it was because of Rosharan Lightweaving

Now, didn't they also use Iyatil's Inkspren's Elsegating to get to the Cognitive Realm? We didn't see the action itself on screen, but they must surely have used that Surge to travel there.

I feel like there's more and more evidence hinting to Enlightened Spren gifting their first Surge largely or completely without change, and their second Surge is altered significantly. 

Edited March 24 by Trusk'our
Spelling error

[PanLin they/he]

21 minutes ago, Frustration said:

He made Iyatil look like Formless, and created the illusions that let the Ghostbloods look like the guards before they got sent to the SR. And his anti-stormligh dagger caused Distortions in his illusion. So it wasn't just then being in the SR as he did it in the Cognitive as well, and anti-stormlight reacted to it

Yep, right on both parts, my bad.

No idea how I managed to blank the memories of Mraize Lightweaving.

35 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I feel like there's more and more evidence hinting to Enlightened Spren gifting their first Surge largely or completely without change, and their second Surge is altered significantly. 

Yeah, valid. Something about it doesn't sit right with me, but the evidence does point to it.

So where does that leave the scene with Adolin? Pure coincidence? An expression of Renarin's powers similar to that scene with Moash?

[Frustration]

8 minutes ago, PanLin said:

Yep, right on both parts, my bad.

No idea how I managed to blank the memories of Mraize Lightweaving.

Yeah, valid. Something about it doesn't sit right with me, but the evidence does point to it.

So where does that leave the scene with Adolin? Pure coincidence? An expression of Renarin's powers similar to that scene with Moash?

That's my belief. That or it's some synergetic ability similar to Reverse lashings

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 3/23/2026 at 6:38 PM, Trusk'our said:

Now, didn't they also use Iyatil's Inkspren's Elsegating to get to the Cognitive Realm? We didn't see the action itself on screen, but they must surely have used that Surge to travel there.

I feel like there's more and more evidence hinting to Enlightened Spren gifting their first Surge largely or completely without change, and their second Surge is altered significantly. 

Oh crap. I completely mixed up the Elsecaller Surges.

Soulcasting is the Surge gained second to Lightweaving with Lightweavers. So, Elsecallers don't gain Elsecalling until after they gain Soulcasting. 

So. . . yeah, my hypothesis cannot be correct, at least if we're assuming that an Enlightened Radiant cannot use their corrupted Surge in the same manner as their "pure" counterparts. Iyatil's Transportation likely works just fine, given that she and Mraize were able to so quickly make it to the CR in WaT (though it doesn't surprise me a little she was able to gain her second Surge so quickly).

[Frustration]

16 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Oh crap. I completely mixed up the Elsecaller Surges.

Soulcasting is the Surge gained second to Lightweaving with Lightweavers. So, Elsecallers don't gain Elsecalling until after they gain Soulcasting. 

So. . . yeah, my hypothesis cannot be correct, at least if we're assuming that an Enlightened Radiant cannot use their corrupted Surge in the same manner as their "pure" counterparts. Iyatil's Transportation likely works just fine, given that she and Mraize were able to so quickly make it to the CR in WaT (though it doesn't surprise me a little she was able to gain her second Surge so quickly).

That doesn't necessarily mean that her Transportation wasn't corrupted. While the end result was the same we don't know how she got there.

And besides you can use Transformation to get to the CR.

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

That doesn't necessarily mean that her Transportation wasn't corrupted. While the end result was the same we don't know how she got there.

That is true. One of my primary assumptions in all of this is that a corrupted Surge will act significantly different than it's pure form. Illumination appears to have lost its primary ability to create illusions, but replaces it with the ability to visualize the future. 

This is of course only one sample though, so it's very possible that other Surges will not follow this apparent model. 

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

And besides you can use Transformation to get to the CR.

Yeah, that could probably work. Both of their Orders have that ability after all.

Though, it was brought up at the beginning of WaT that Shallan's two bonds are what really dragged her into Shadesmar when she tried Soulcasting. Do we have any other examples of Soulcasters attempting to physically enter the CR, or was it only Shallan?

 

[Jult]

The Stormlight Handbook for the RPG does contain rules for bonding Enlightened Spren. It's limited to Mistspren only - probably to avoid spoilers and conflicts with canon, but it's notable to mention that bonding an Enlightened Mistspren in the game gives you access to all 3 of the normal Truthwacher Talent trees (Mistspren Bond, Progression, and Illumination) as well as a special 4th tree for Enlightened Talents.

I think it's important to highlight that this 4th Talent tree (which contains Talents related to seeing the Future and Past) does not replace any of the other Trees. It only grants additional Talent options.

Until the books say otherwise, it's the closest thing to a canon answer on Enlightened Spren that we have. So, my current opinion is that Renarin could do normal Lightweaving; it just hasn't clicked for him yet. Him not being able to do it doesn't automatically mean that no Enlightened Truthwatcher could.

On 3/23/2026 at 7:37 PM, PanLin said:

Below is a table I've put together, extrapolating these concepts to all the Rosharan Surges. I think I'm happy with it, but would love to discuss any parts of it that don't seem right or are just straight up contradicted by the books.

I love the direction you're going in, and nothing is jumping out at me as a contradiction.

I'm not sure where in your table it would go, but since we're diving into Cognitive and Spiritual variations on Surges... One "gap" in the Surge system that has always irked me is that there doesn't seem to be anything in the Surges analogous to Emotional Allomancy. 

I don't expect a one-to-one mapping of abilities between the different power systems, but I do subscribe to the idea that there is an underlying unified magic system that all of the others are based on. And it really bugs me that there are no Emotional powers - something that we know exists in the Cosmere - on the planet that ODIUM is Invested in. It's been a hope of mine for a while now that Voidbinding would fill this hole. Especially since we've seen some of the Unmade doing it already (Ashertman and Nergaoul mostly).

[Atlas333]

23 hours ago, Jult said:

I think it's important to highlight that this 4th Talent tree (which contains Talents related to seeing the Future and Past) does not replace any of the other Trees. It only grants additional Talent options.

Until the books say otherwise, it's the closest thing to a canon answer on Enlightened Spren that we have. So, my current opinion is that Renarin could do normal Lightweaving; it just hasn't clicked for him yet. Him not being able to do it doesn't automatically mean that no Enlightened Truthwatcher could.

I think that when making rules for a game, mechanics sometimes take priority over lore (such as Skyrbeaker characters having immediate access to division instead of having to wait until the 3rd ideal). In this case, they likely didn't want to prevent player options.

 

Also, I think that the books trump the RPG in terms of canon, and it's explicitly stated in Rhythm of War that Renarin can't lightweave normally. By this time, Renarin has had a year or so to learn about his powers. I feel like he could have made it "click" for him, considering he's surrounded by potential teachers. 

Quote

Renarin claimed the spren was trustworthy, but something was odd about his powers. They had managed to recruit several standard Truthwatchers— and they could create illusions like Shallan. Renarin couldn’t do that. He could only summon lights, and they did strange, unnatural things sometimes...

However, things get murky when that ability with lights that "do strange things" is apparently a normal thing either a truthwatcher or lightweaver can do with illumination, according to the RPG rules. It's called "Painful Truth" and is identical to what Renarin does to Moash (You create a haunting image of who an enemy could have been if they’d taken a better path).

But then again, Shallan does something similar to Mraize, so maybe it's not contradictory.

 

 

On 3/23/2026 at 7:26 PM, Frustration said:

That's my belief. That or it's some synergetic ability similar to Reverse lashings

This is potentially answered in the RPG rules. Some orders have a unique ability that uses both of their surges (like reverse lashings), and Truthwatchers get "spiritual healing." This ability "mixes Illumination and Regrowth to skillfully repair the mind and soul."

 

All together, the RPG rules don't shed too much helpful light and even potentially contradictory. I imagine this is because the rules reflect what we currently know, and Brandon doesn't want to canonize things before he has to.

But my interpretation of all this is that Renarin has normal progression (the image Adolin saw was a synergy between his two surges) and then has enlightened illumination, which allows him to create illusions of "painful truths." Future Visions could be another application of enlightened illumination, but it could also be a third new thing. It could be argued that Glys is the product of three shards, so he may be able to grant 3 surges (in my opinion). 

Edited March 31 by Atlas333
Forgot Shallan used an ability similar to painful truth

[Frustration]

23 hours ago, Jult said:

The Stormlight Handbook for the RPG does contain rules for bonding Enlightened Spren. It's limited to Mistspren only - probably to avoid spoilers and conflicts with canon, but it's notable to mention that bonding an Enlightened Mistspren in the game gives you access to all 3 of the normal Truthwacher Talent trees (Mistspren Bond, Progression, and Illumination) as well as a special 4th tree for Enlightened Talents.

I think it's important to highlight that this 4th Talent tree (which contains Talents related to seeing the Future and Past) does not replace any of the other Trees. It only grants additional Talent options.

Until the books say otherwise, it's the closest thing to a canon answer on Enlightened Spren that we have. So, my current opinion is that Renarin could do normal Lightweaving; it just hasn't clicked for him yet. Him not being able to do it doesn't automatically mean that no Enlightened Truthwatcher could.

The SA RPG has some terrible inaccuracies when it comes to the lore. Just to list a few: Soulcasting fire is not more difficult, Shardblades are way more dangerous, 4th ideal and higher are outright immune to Suppression fabrials, it is harder to soulcast stone than living things, etc.

The books outright say that Renarin cannot use normal lightweaving, it would just be one more item on the list.

[Jult]

17 hours ago, Atlas333 said:

I think that when making rules for a game, mechanics sometimes take priority over lore (such as Skyrbeaker characters having immediate access to division instead of having to wait until the 3rd ideal). In this case, they likely didn't want to prevent player options.

They usually include GM notes whenever they do something like this though. They're quite good at acknowledging when they blur the lines on canon info. For example, Skybreakers waiting until the 3rd ideal to use Division is mentioned in the rulebook:

Spoiler

They just don't force that restriction on players because non-Nale-following Skybreakers exist.

18 hours ago, Atlas333 said:

Also, I think that the books trump the RPG in terms of canon, and it's explicitly stated in Rhythm of War that Renarin can't lightweave normally.

100% agree that the books trump the RPG. But the books only say that Renarin can't Lightweave normally. I think most of this fandom has assumed that means no Enlightened Truthwatcher can. And, while that may turn out to be correct, I don't think it's a completely safe assumption - especially since the RPG seems to contradict it. Renarin may just be bad at it or maybe there's some trick to using Illumination as a Truthwatcher that the Lightweavers can't teach him. 

18 hours ago, Frustration said:

The SA RPG has some terrible inaccuracies when it comes to the lore. Just to list a few: Soulcasting fire is not more difficult, Shardblades are way more dangerous, 4th ideal and higher are outright immune to Suppression fabrials, it is harder to soulcast stone than living things, etc.

Most of these are tweaks to make combat more fair in-game. They aren't as dramatic as granting access to an entire Surge tree that a character normally wouldn't be able to have. I'm not even sure I'd call them all inaccuracies. I could see it being more difficult to convince an object to become fire than anything else - Shallan certainly had a rough time trying to convince Stick to be fire. And I can't recall many scenes in the books where 4th-ideal Radiants dealt with suppressor fabrials - I can only think of Kaladin doing it at the end of RoW, but that was immediately after swearing an ideal so he would have been more empowered than normal. And I'm not sure what you're referring to with the stone vs living things comment - I think in both sources Soulcasting living things is harder. 

[Frustration]

16 minutes ago, Jult said:

Most of these are tweaks to make combat more fair in-game. They aren't as dramatic as granting access to an entire Surge tree that a character normally wouldn't be able to have. I'm not even sure I'd call them all inaccuracies. I could see it being more difficult to convince an object to become fire than anything else - Shallan certainly had a rough time trying to convince Stick to be fire.

That's just Shallan being bad. The difficulty isn't based on what you are changing the object into, only what it is.

16 minutes ago, Jult said:

And I can't recall many scenes in the books where 4th-ideal Radiants dealt with suppressor fabrials - I can only think of Kaladin doing it at the end of RoW, but that was immediately after swearing an ideal so he would have been more empowered than normal. 

Empowerment is also only a game mechanic. Surges are always more powerful after swearing an ideal, not just temporarily. (WoK, 955).

At the fourth ideal Kaladin is able to overcome the Sibling's suppression. The Sibling of course was a lot stronger able to knock those it suppressed out, not just turn off their powers as happens with the smaller suppression devices.

16 minutes ago, Jult said:

And I'm not sure what you're referring to with the stone vs living things comment - I think in both sources Soulcasting living things is harder. 

That comes from the Ars Arcanum from RoW page 1229. Soulcasting Stone is often times more difficult unless the individual is invested.

Edited April 1 by Frustration

[Jult]

24 minutes ago, Frustration said:

The difficulty isn't based on what you are changing the object into, only what it is.

I think the target substance does matter. But agree to disagree. I already feel like I've pulled us too far from the original topic.

17 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Empowerment is also only a game mechanic. Surges are always more powerful after swearing an ideal, not just temporarily. (WoK, 955).

I wouldn't say it's only a game mechanic. Radiants connect directly to the SR when they speak an ideal and get a huge temporary boost of Investiture as a result. That's what the empowered status represents.

26 minutes ago, Frustration said:

That comes from the Ars Arcanum from RoW page 1229.

Ahhh... It's always the Ars Arcanums that get me.. I've got to re-read those more often. Thank you, friend.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I think PanLin's main ideas could work and are similar to what I've been hoping Voidbinding would turn out to be (which may make me a bit biased towards wanting them to be right). Even if we want to ignore RPG evidence, I still argue that it's possible Renarin's lightweaving shortcomings could be more of a personal skill issue than a universal law of how Enlightenment works.

If that's true, then we can think of Enlightenment as being additive instead of transformative (with regard to Surges). Which eliminates any wrenches that Mraize's lightweaving may throw into Panlin's theories.

[AltonicKeys he/him]

On 3/23/2026 at 4:37 PM, PanLin said:

tl;dr:

Sja-anat enlightens spren by giving them a stronger Connection to the spiritual realm. The Radiant powers they grant are therefore filtered through, and strengthened by, the spiritual realm.

 

What does enlightening itself do?

No list of WoBs this time—most of this thinking comes from in-text evidence and the application of wider realmatics to Rosharan concepts.

That said, the wiki excerpts on Sja-anat and spren are interesting:

  Hide contents

Sja-anat's touch has the ability to corrupt spren that she comes into contact with, injecting them with Voidlight.^[2][13] Sja-anat refers to this process as Enlightening.^[11] Spren affected by Sja-anat begin to carry the taint of Odium,^[14] and in rare cases can even grant abilities associated with Odium's power,^[15][16] though the extent of his influence on the affected spren is unknown.

 

Enlightened true spren have extra affinity and abilities in the Spiritual Realm that normal true spren lack.^[289][25] Enlightened spren are easily able to navigate the Spiritual Realm, as well as find and move other people or things inside of it.^{[265][289][290]} They can also track down visions that are created.^[291] They are able to make other people appear as the person they are taking over in visions, though they can't also choose which person they get.^{[292][293][137]} They can also alter a vision, removing or resetting certain elements.^[294] If noticed by a Shard, Enlightened spren have difficulty using their abilities.^[295]

So there's in-text confirmation that spren who have been enlightened have a greater affinity (or Connection) to the spiritual realm. 

 

Both of Renarin's surges are enlightened

Many people theorise that when a truespren is enlightened, a Nahel bond with them produces one 'normal' Surge and one enlightened, pointing to Renarin's use of Progression as evidence. It's a convenient way to explain what is apparently happening in-text, but:

• It's not a very satisfying explanation
• It leans into this idea that each radiant order has a 'major' and 'minor' Surge (an idea I've never really subscribed to)
• It assumes that we already know everything we need to (absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence)

Besides, we do have evidence of something unusual with Renarin's Progression: the 'perfected version' that Adolin briefly felt of himself when being healed by Renarin. We've seen this sort of thing before with stuff like Shallan's portraits and A-Gold, but not with any other use of Progression; it can, however, easily be explained if we say that enlightened Progression heals according to one's spiritual self instead of their cognitive. From Oathbringer:

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“A pulse of radiance washed through Adolin and for an instant he saw himself perfected. A version of himself that was somehow complete and whole; the man he could be. It was gone in a moment and Renarin pulled his hand free and murmured an apology.”

Progression normally works by changing someone's physical form to match their cognitive form. What if enlightened Progression, filtered through a spren with a stronger Connection to the spiritual realm, changes someone's physical form to match their spiritual form? I'd wager that, for the most part, it wouldn't look any different to onlookers. Hell, most people aren't realmatically aware enough to know how normal Progression works; they just see Stormlight-powered healing and think "magic".

I actually think this might be one of the reasons Truthwatchers are the first enlightened radiants we've been properly exposed to, intentionally using Progression as a sort of red herring to cheekily go "nothing unusual here, no no" before we get some sort of classic Sanderson reveal in the future.

 

I'm still just a rat in a cave

Not to get too distracted (aka my future epitaph), but Plato's Theory of Forms (which has some uncanny overlap with Cosmere realmatics) posits that the physical world is just a shadowy imitation and interpretation of reality, which exists outside of time and space in a realm of pure concepts.

Further, his Allegory of the Cave (it's an interesting read if you're unfamiliar, go read it!) suggests three 'levels' of reality: the shadows on the wall, the people casting those shadows, and the world outside the cave. Most normal people assume the role of someone who has spent their entire life in the cave, viewing the shadows as their entire understanding of reality; seeing beyond those shadows is the first step toward enlightenment (a pure coincidence, I'm sure...).

Applying that to the Cosmere, we can see a very obvious relationship between the three realms:

• Spiritual: actual reality, a realm made purely of Investiture that defines the Identity and Connection of everyone and everything in existence (the real world outside the cave)
• Cognitive: a realm of thought and interpretation that takes the real world of the spiritual realm and gives it context (the people casting the shadows)
• Physical: the world we know, a limited representation of the other realms (the shadows on the wall)

 

Upgrades, people. Upgrades

I bring this all up because I think enlightened spren essentially give access to the same Surges, but literally enlightened in a philosophical sense. The physical and cognitive effects of normal Surges become cognitive and spiritual effects for enlightened Radiants.

Progression, as mentioned above, goes from using a cognitive template to using a spiritual template for healing.

Illumination allows Lightweavers to physically represent cognitive visions; it logically follows that a realmatically 'upgraded' version of that would cognitively represent spiritual visions. This is exactly what we see in Renarin; he glimpses the spiritual realm, which comes hand-in-hand with visions of potential futures. The enlightened version of Illumination isn't simply 'Futuresight', but limited access to the spiritual realm and the cognitive means to understand it, a 2-for-1 combo extremely similar to the atium/electrum alloy from Mistborn era 1.

Below is a table I've put together, extrapolating these concepts to all the Rosharan Surges. I think I'm happy with it, but would love to discuss any parts of it that don't seem right or are just straight up contradicted by the books.

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Surge	Radiant ability	Realmatic effect	Potential enlightened effect	Proposed enlightened ability
Illumination	Lightweaving	Projects cognitive concepts into physical space	Projects spiritual concepts into cognitive space	Futuresight, greater spiritual awareness
Progression	Regrowth	Aligns physical form to cognitive	Aligns physical form to spiritual	Personal manifestation (healing toward an 'ideal' self, as seen by Shallan / A-Gold)
Abrasion	Friction manipulation	Manipulates interactions between nearby objects	Manipulates interactions between nearby expressions of Investiture, matter and energy	Manipulation of spiritweb's susceptibility to interference
Division	Disintegration	Gives control over molecular breakdown; adds energy to systems to ignite them	Gives control over breakdown of Identity and Connection	Spiritual severance / disintegration (similar to effects of anti-Investiture / Evil)
Gravitation	Lashings	Rewrites gravitational Connections to spatial trajectories	Lashes spiritwebs to temporal trajectories	Destiny / Fortune manipulation
Adhesion	Pressure manipulation	Creates bonds easily via direct increases of Connection	Creates bonds across realms (perpendicularities)	Connection manipulation
Tension	Stress manipulation	Manipulates internal structures while maintaining a cohesive self	Manipulates rules around spiritweb configuration without changing Identity	Something similar to Soulstamping, but maintains Identity
Cohesion	Matter manipulation	Reshapes matter	Control over matter / energy / Investiture conversion	Fully unbound transmutation
Transportation	Elsecalling	Physical and cognitive traversal	Full realmatic traversal	Free traversal through and across the three realms
Transformation	Soulcasting	Changes cognitive aspect of something, which is refected in its physical	Changes spiritual aspect of something, which is refected in its cognitive and physical	Identity manipulation (could bypass restrictions on keyed Investiture like metalminds)

I also think this is an important step toward answering questions like 'what is Voidbinding' and how both that and enlightened spren are related to the Unmade in general, but I want to get this part really watertight before I do that.

Thoughts / feedback / fun facts / challenges / insults / praise welcome!

Um... Ignoring all the discourse on whether this theory can be true or not...

Could we argue that the reason Bondsmiths work the way they do is because the Bondsmith spren that we've seen so far are splinters of Shards, which would be closer to the SR? I refuse to believe that their abilities are purely a result of a resonance between surges, and having a lot of investiture.

Following that logic, if you made a "normal" true spren for Bondsmiths, on the same level of investiture and "SR affinity" as an honorspren, would we see a less powerful set of abilities more on-par with the other orders? And an enlightened version of this Bondsmith spren would grant the powers we've seen? (Maybe to a lesser degree since they don't have the same investiture amount as the Stormfather or whatever)

[PanLin they/he]

Gosh, a lot happening here since I last checked in.

On 3/24/2026 at 1:26 AM, Frustration said:

That's my belief. That or it's some synergetic ability similar to Reverse lashings

Or maybe a different resonance to the one normal Truthwatchers would get?

On 3/30/2026 at 9:12 PM, Jult said:

I'm not sure where in your table it would go, but since we're diving into Cognitive and Spiritual variations on Surges... One "gap" in the Surge system that has always irked me is that there doesn't seem to be anything in the Surges analogous to Emotional Allomancy. 

True, but across the Cosmere, emotions seem very closely tied to Intent and Identity; if Bondsmiths have the greatest control over Connection, maybe Truthwatchers have the greatest control over Identity, and therefore emotions?

Spoiler

Surge	Radiant ability	Realmatic effect	Potential enlightened effect	Proposed enlightened ability
Illumination	Lightweaving	Projects cognitive concepts into physical space	Projects spiritual concepts into cognitive space	Futuresight, greater spiritual awareness
Progression	Regrowth	Aligns physical form to cognitive	Aligns physical form to spiritual	Personal manifestation (healing toward an 'ideal' self, as seen by Shallan / A-Gold)

 

On 3/30/2026 at 9:12 PM, Jult said:

I don't expect a one-to-one mapping of abilities between the different power systems, but I do subscribe to the idea that there is an underlying unified magic system that all of the others are based on. And it really bugs me that there are no Emotional powers - something that we know exists in the Cosmere - on the planet that ODIUM is Invested in. It's been a hope of mine for a while now that Voidbinding would fill this hole. Especially since we've seen some of the Unmade doing it already (Ashertman and Nergaoul mostly).

Oh 100%. I have a spreadsheet where I'm organising all my thoughts and theories on this that's currently at 18 tabs

I think the Shards have four 'themes' related to the acquisition of their invested art (you can read here if you're interested). Within that, Ruin and Odium share a theme of Identity reduction/sacrifice.

We know that Hemalurgy irreparably damages the spiritweb of both the donor and the recipient, and that Ruin's power allows for the full domination of people with enough of his Investiture (an ability Harmony now has). Odium regularly steals or amplifies the emotions of people (a theme consistent across a lot of the Unmade), which further strengthens this relationship between emotions and Identity, and the main mechanic of the Fused's immortality is the requirement to possess (or replace/hijack the Identity of) a host each time they come back.

On 3/30/2026 at 9:12 PM, Jult said:

I think it's important to highlight that this 4th Talent tree (which contains Talents related to seeing the Future and Past) does not replace any of the other Trees. It only grants additional Talent options.

This is interesting! As @Atlas333 and @Frustration pointed out, I'm going to avoid making any big leaps in logic based on stuff that only appears in the RPGs, but I do think a dataset of 1 (Renarin) is far too small to make any sweeping statements about what exactly Enlightened Truthwatchers can or can't do.

On 3/31/2026 at 8:48 PM, Atlas333 said:

However, things get murky when that ability with lights that "do strange things" is apparently a normal thing either a truthwatcher or lightweaver can do with illumination, according to the RPG rules. It's called "Painful Truth" and is identical to what Renarin does to Moash (You create a haunting image of who an enemy could have been if they’d taken a better path).

But then again, Shallan does something similar to Mraize, so maybe it's not contradictory.

This is also interesting—it could just be that we don't understand the Surge of Illumination well enough yet. We're led to believe that its primary power is creating illusions, but we were also led to believe that there were only 10 allomantic metals so maybe, like I set out in my table above, Illumination is just the power to take cognitive concepts and project them into physical space (would also better explain the map that Shallan and Dalinar created better than just 'hehe quirky power interaction'); Lightweavers are naturally better at illusions thanks to their resonant mnemonic abilities, but the Surge itself is so much more than that.

4 hours ago, Jult said:

I think PanLin's main ideas could work and are similar to what I've been hoping Voidbinding would turn out to be (which may make me a bit biased towards wanting them to be right). Even if we want to ignore RPG evidence, I still argue that it's possible Renarin's lightweaving shortcomings could be more of a personal skill issue than a universal law of how Enlightenment works.

If that's true, then we can think of Enlightenment as being additive instead of transformative (with regard to Surges). Which eliminates any wrenches that Mraize's lightweaving may throw into Panlin's theories.

I mean, I'm obviously biased too (but eager to have my theories outright disproven, that's how scientific enquiry works!), but I agree with this sentiment. There's also the wildcard aspect that, as a Ghostblood, we simply don't know what other abilities/tech Mraize had access to, and how those may have influenced his expression of Surges and other abilities.

Sanderson does love to obscure realmatic mechanics by exposing us to abnormal applications of them before we truly understand them.

3 hours ago, AltonicDegrees said:

Could we argue that the reason Bondsmiths work the way they do is because the Bondsmith spren that we've seen so far are splinters of Shards, which would be closer to the SR? I refuse to believe that their abilities are purely a result of a resonance between surges, and having a lot of investiture.

Following that logic, if you made a "normal" true spren for Bondsmiths, on the same level of investiture and "SR affinity" as an honorspren, would we see a less powerful set of abilities more on-par with the other orders? And an enlightened version of this Bondsmith spren would grant the powers we've seen? (Maybe to a lesser degree since they don't have the same investiture amount as the Stormfather or whatever)

Yes! When I put my chart together, I specifically excluded the 'hey this isn't normal' abilities of Bondsmiths, but as I started to fill in the blanks of the other Enlightened abilities, I realised it fit too well to be a coincidence. (although, maybe my inherent bias and propensity for getting stuck in rabbit holes led me to make those connections)

Which really just, in my opinion at least, adds credence to the idea that, ultimately, Sja-Anat gives spren a greater Connection to the spiritual realm, and that non-Enlightened spren could theoretically provide the same abilities if they managed to achieve that Connection a different way.

 

EDIT: Forgot to add, I'm also semi-operating on my other theory that there are only 8 'true' Surges of Roshar, and that Honor and Cultivation created the double eye model by inserting their own influence directly (topic here if anyone's interested).

This would mean that Bondsmiths and Truthwatchers are of a different 'class' of Order than the other eight; rules and restrictions that apply to the others might not apply in the same way to these two.

Edited April 1 by PanLin