Musings on Cultivation and Shin Shamanism

[Stoneward]

Thanks to the new WoR excerpt, we now know that "Cultivation, the god worshipped in the West, is a female deity that is an embodiment of nature and nature spren." There is not much further west than Shinnovar, and this immediately made me think of the Shin culture and religion, particularly how they revere farmers. 

 

So here's my thought. If Cultivation worship heavily influenced Shin Shamanism, maybe we can garner some hints about Cultivation's personality and intent by reverse-engineering what we know about the Shin culture and religious beliefs.

 

Relevant Quotes from tWoK (I'm sure there are others):

Stormlight is Sacred. The casual use of Stormlight is profane:

"They held sapphires infused with Stormlight. Profane. How could the men of these lands use something so sacred for mere illumination?" [Prologue: To Kill]

 

Fabrials are not to be used.

Shin find fabrials "...worthless. Or Unholy. Or too holy to use." [Rysn interlude]

 

Stone is Holy. Walking on, cutting, or breaking stone is profane:

"Once, he would have revered a corridor of rock like this." [Recorded in Blood]

"...surrounded by rock walls, ceiling, and floor. That was profane. Stone was not to be trod upon." [Prologue: To Kill]

"...yet another blasphemy - he raised his Shardblade and slashed horizontally through the dark grey stone." [Prologue: To Kill]

"Metal that bears no strain of broken rock. A miracle" [Rysn interlude]

 

Killing is the greatest sin:

"To kill. It was the greatest of sins." [Prologue: To Kill]

 

Farms and farmers are holy:

"Indeed," Vstim said. "Holy places, here. Foreigners aren't allowed near fields or farming villages." [Rysn interlude]

 

Spirits (spren?) should be noticed.

"They ignored the spirits of things that lived around them..." [A Work of Art interlude]

 

Food restricted by day.

"they ate whatever they wanted on any day they wanted." [A Work of Art interlude] 

 

It's difficult to know how much of what the Shin believe has been warped or twisted over the years, but that doesn't mean we can't speculate. Here are some possibilities that were either already floating around that are strengthened by this, or that I came up with on my own:

• Cultivation really, really likes rocks for some reason. Any guesses why?
• Stormlight is directly related to Cultivation's shard in some way.
• This may sound obvious, but Cultivation's intent is similar to that of a farmers.
  • Cultivation on a farm is all about production. It involves both the preparing/breaking the old ground, planting, and encouraging the plants to grow and produce.
  • This can often involve pruning dead growth and clearing weeds. Sinister!
• There's something going on there with the food. It's possible that all edible plants on Roshar exist due to Cultivation's investiture. This may help explain how Lift metabolizes Stormlight from food.
• Cultivation hates war and killing.
  • This is interesting. If cultivating people requires the metaphorical dead growth to be cleared and the ground to be broken but isn't willing to do any killing herself, this may be why she has/had a solid working relationship with Odium. "hey, could you clear these weeds out?" "why, certainly, my dear..."
  • Desolations: Cultivation might need them. Woah.

Edited January 15, 2014 by Stoneward

[zandi she/her]

I never read it as cultivation likes rocks - i thought the source for that shin belief might be fear of the thunderclasts. I agree some of their beliefs might be directly relating to her but other might stem from more practical knowledge.

[Darkness he/him]

I wouldn't use "why certainly my dear" as a motive for Odium. Perhaps Rayse at some point had an affinity for Cultivation's holder, but remember the shardic intent of Odium. It isn't about war or destruction, those are just byproducts. Odium is all-encompassing, intense hatred. I can't see him forming a coalition or even agreement with any shard voluntarily. He even went so far as to refuse gaining the power of other splintered shards to avoid becoming contaminated by another intent. Although… it would be scary to see a combination of Odium and Endowment

[11thorderknight]

My personal theory for a while has been that, for whatever reason (very likely related to Taln's upholding the Oathpact) the Shin continued to bond with spren but only to form Type 9 surgebinders (i.e. those who would have been Stonewards had they been Radiants). Of course, their religion forbids fighting, so their focus changed, and they are now the Stone Shamans. But they still can surgebind, and will fight when necessary. Remember, Szeth thinks they'd have no problem locating and retrieving his Blade if he dies. Them's fightin' words, there. 

[Bramble Thorn]

From the Lift interlude, the spren there believes Cultivation does not interact with humans much since the demise of Tanavast, having abandoned them. While looking at Shin Kak Nish would give you useful insight into Cultivation, I would not say the same about modern Shinovar. Much like modern modern Vorinism and the culture of the Alethi, is less a window into Tanavast, and more an indicator of Sunmaker Shenanigans and general Odiousness going on.

 

From Szeths internal thought on his punishment, voidbringers, and honor, I suspect Shinovar got a similar treatment.

[WhiskeyJackDaniels he/him]

If we accept that Odium is selectively altering theologies and cultural beliefs on Roshar perhaps he built up the reverence that the Shin have of stone.

Here's my reasoning:

Via Szeth we get some insight that the Shin are not nearly as helpless as the rest of the world seems to think. He knows that if he died his people would come and take his shardblade back to Shin, and it doesn't sound like he worries about their ability to do it, even though they'd likely have to fight multiple shard bearers to do it. This implies that they have other shard bearers and/or surgebinders. (Perhaps a lot more, we can extrapolate from the Feverstone Keep vision that there were once at least 1500 shardblades in the world, assuming all ten orders had blades and were about the same size)

With the KR gone Odium might view the Shin as the most dangerous group on Roshar. If that is the case it makes sense for him to alter their beliefs to make them want to stay isolated in the west, away from the east and it's ubiquitous stone.

[Bramble Thorn]

With the KR gone Odium might view the Shin as the most dangerous group on Roshar. If that is the case it makes sense for him to alter their beliefs to make them want to stay isolated in the west, away from the east and it's ubiquitous stone.

 

Odium seem to be playing a long game. The way I think it went down was this:

First the Heralds, because they were are seemingly immortal, and well informed of the way of things.

Just because they abandoned the honorblades does not mean Odium was done with them; it just means Odium was more subtle in messing them up, to where their actions serve his purposes more often than not.

 

Then dismantling the Knights Radiant and suppression of Surgebinders, then the dismantling of accurate history and redefinition of such things as Honor, all to set up the field to divide and conquer, not only unprepared, but with various "trained errors" inherent in the system

 

Not that this is necessarily a master plan. More like Rosher was actually pretty well put together, with multiple interlocking defenses that supported each other, such that the at the end, before the Heralds broke, the system for holding off the desolation's able to continue indefinitely. Which is why there has been such a gap between the Last Desolation and the True Desolation, to give Odium (and entropy) time to wear everything down. No ten Heralds, no Knights Radiant, no silver Kingdoms, no Nahel bonds, no visions, no help from cultivation, no spren, and institutional dishonor to block any bonding with honor spren. Also "voidbringers are myths," the "Thrill" of the lighteyes, the KR are the bad guys, etc and so on. Either this guy as been busy, or all the stupid from the Wheel of Time got up to 88mph and crossed dimensions.