Investiture, the Cosmere and Everything

[GuardsmanBob]

Hello,

 

Just writing out my personal theory of the Cosmere so that maybe someone can help me figure out if I misunderstood anything or help me fill in some holes.

 

The Cognitive Realm

I believe the Soulcasting properties of the table in SA is a list of how the cognitive realm is represented is various locations, this gives us a list of 10 representations

1. Translucent gas, air            - Sel?
2. Opaque gas, smoke, fog - Scadrial
3. Fire                                     - Braize?
4. Quartz, glass, crystal       - Roshar
5. Wood, plants, moss
6. Blood, all non-oil liquad
7. All kinds of oil
8. Metal
9. Rock and stone
10. Meats, flesh

Sel is a guess? I'm not sure where I got it into my head, Braize seem a perfect fit with fire partly because the name and partly for reasons mentioned later.

 

Now the following conjectures:

 

1) This is an incomplete list

I feel that this would be very much in Brandons style to give us a part of a larger list.

 

2) The cognitive representation is native to the planet (and moons?)

This appears to be true so far perhaps the most massive nearby 'body' dictates the cognitive representation or perhaps there is something more going on with planets than what we know so far.

 

3) Not all cognitive realms are survivable without some form of protection

This would help explain multiple events, including Cosmere migration patterns as well as why on Sel people 'die' when they are put into the pool.

 

 

Body Focus

We are also given a list of 10 'Body Focus'

1. Inhalation
2. Exhalation - Awakening     - Endowment
3. The Soul
4. The Eyes   - SurgeBinding - Honor
5. The Hair
6. The Blood - Bloodsealing
7. Oil
8. The Nails   - Aon'Dor
9. The Bone  - Dhakor
10. Flesh

Surgebinding having eye focus explains why each order has different eye color when holding Stormlight and why each order has exactly 2 surges.

 

And the following Conjectures

 

1) The body Focus in native to a shard.

Not all magic systems seem to have an obvious body focus, but many seem to fit exceptionally well and it is likely we are missing a good amount of information still.

 

2) The Body Focus is the part of the body which must be moved in or turned into a specific pattern to use the magic.

This seems to fit very well with most magic systems such as Surgebinding, Aon'Dor and Dhakor magic, but leaves some things still to be explained for other systems.

 

3) Magic functions by drawing investiture from the Spiritual realm, *through* the cognitive ream, and into the physical realm.

This would have the implication that some magic system would be unsafe or even straight up deadly to use on certain planets.

For example I suspect that the Sel and Scadrial cognitive realm will only cause a change in power level between them, but using Allomancy on Braize would likely kill you (assuming I guessed right on the representation of the realms).

 

4) Shards are naturally drawn to planets where their magic is safe.

This would explain why shards seem to be near the planet on which their magic is mainly utilized.

 

5) Hoid is searching for magic which is safe to use on certain planets.

This would go a long way to explain many of his actions, perhaps he is after someone or something which has taken refuge in a place where his magic is unsafe.

 

 

 

Unanswered Questions

Some planets have more magic systems than shards. I suspect that, since Brandon has been very avid in saying that distance has no meaning in the spiritual realm, shard locality is somewhat of a misdirection.

 

Additionally I speculate that some magic systems are either inherent to Adonalsium, the Cosmere in general or some unknown forces we have not yet seen..

 

Furthermore there are 3 more lists in the table which I do not see any obvious clues in.

 

Thoughts?

Edited March 24, 2016 by GuardsmanBob

[Bugsy he/him]

I was under the impression that the cognitive realm is represented by all objects in the cosmere rather than a select few, as demonstrated by soulcasting and forging. I have to go rn, but I'll edit this post with any more things I can think of

[Yata he/him]

First of all remember that the Ten Essences table is an in-world Knowledge, therefore we can't be sure about its content, same problem with the Ars Arcanum.

 

We know from WoB that the Essences Table was made by phylosphers but they made some mistakes.

 

 

Q: Are the Ten Essence related to the Ten Shardworld's Form-of-Investiture ?

A: They are not as related as philosophers from ancient days, who created those tables, thought that they were.

 

Therefore some information of the table itself may be take without the right context (They gathered knowledge, but the Informations themself are probably come by many worldhopper and their stories. They take all this data and tried to find a sense to them and their doctrine.

 

One example: I think the 8th:  Foil                The nails                  Metal

Talk about Scadrial, of course the Soulcasting propriety are a strict correlation with Scadrial's Focus. and the "body focus" nail actually was a misunderstoonding about the Hemalurgic Spike (the word Nail in English may refer to both thing).

 

I advice to you the reading here where Skaa develop a very intresting Theory about.. 

Edited March 24, 2016 by Yata

[Batemenace]

Part of the problem with trying to categorize or compare things in the cosmere is that there isn't always a one-to-one match. Grouping and comparing different magics, investiture, and what ever else in the cosmere is more akin to translating from one language to the next than a mathematical equation. You're probably going to be forced to settle for approximations. Like Yata mentioned above me with the Ten Essences, many of the groupings mentioned in-book are more of an interpretation by the characters trying to make sense of the stuff around them using limited and incomplete information than any actual underlying law of the cosmere.

 

That said, the magics in the cosmere do have some underlying direct relationships with each other, one of which is that they are derived from the same origin (Adonalsium, etc.), and Sanderson has stated that he does in fact have a complex equation roughly linking all the different forms of investiture. Beyond that, much of the way things in the cosmere manifest are dependent on the people interacting with the investiture, and as we all are well aware of at this point, no two people are quite the same...