Why is it called the "Old Magic?"

[Xaladin he/him]

I know a lot of people think the Nightwatcher is a spren of Cultivation, but if the Nightwatcher is associated with "Old Magic," could that mean that it is old, meaning she was there before Honor and Cultivation?

Could the Nightwatcher be a Splinter of Adonalsium?

What part of the boons/curses behaves Cultivation-ey? It doesn't seem obvious to me.

 

I think we are missing a large part of the picture if we assume the Nightwatcher is primarily a Cultivation thing. Perhaps Cultivation got involved later, but I think Nightwatcher is either native to Roshar or otherwise splintered directly from Adonalsium.

 

What say ye?

[Eki]

Well, the being that is now the Stormfather seems to be an Adonalsium spren (since highstorms existed before the shards arrived) merged with the cognitive shadow of Tanavast. So it's very possible that the Nightwatcher is an Adonalsium spren, and maybe that it 'aligned' with Cultivation in some way. (Cultivation seems to be alive, so if it is aligned with Cultivation, it's not in the same way as the Stormfather is to Honor.)

[Pagerunner he/him]

There's a relevant WoB from JordanCon that confirms Nightwatcher is a spren of Cultivation. No direct quote, but a paraphrase says that Honor has the Stormfather, Cultivation has the Nightwatcher, and that Odium has the Unmade (as a collective). Powerful, sentient splinters, made intentionally. You can find it here, towards the bottom of the post.

[Ecthelion III he/him]

In that same quote, Brandon says:

 

A spren is Investiture that is alive.... They would probably call Adonalsium a spren. [Laughter]

 

So if I'm reading this right, Adonalsium IS all of the forms of Investiture in all the worlds combined?

Edited June 14, 2016 by Ecthelion III

[Farnsworth]

Yes, that would make sense. He is a giant spren of all the forms of investiture. What if somebody bonded him?

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

On 6/13/2016 at 7:24 PM, Xaladin said:

What part of the boons/curses behaves Cultivation-ey? It doesn't seem obvious to me.

This is something I actually gave some thought to in a different context. There was a thread a while back discussing the differences between the Intents of various Shards, with one example being the differences between Ruin, Preservation, and Cultivation. The question boiled down to: since both Ruin and Cultivation are Intents that promote change, what exactly is the difference between them?

The way I like to think about it is in terms of a quote from Hero of Ages regarding Ruin. It's from the Chapter 8 epigraph:

Quote

Ruin could plan and carefully plot, knowing if he built one thing up, he could use it to knock down two others.

I think of Cultivation as being the opposite of this: willing to destroy one thing if it means getting to build two more. In real life terms, Cultivation can prune flowers, destroying bits of them so that the entire plant grows and stays healthy. My personal theory on the boons/curses follows from this interpretation of Cultivation's Intent. I think that the curses that come with the boons are ultimately helpful, in the long run. It's hard to prove this since we only have about four specific examples of curses. From Coppermind and Way of Kings (Baxil's Interlude):

1. Dalinar can't remember his wife

2. Av's brother got numb hands and couldn't feel anything with them

3. Av's father saw the world upside down

4. Taravangian is dumb sometimes

Even the fourth one here is implied rather than explicitly stated. I will admit that Av says most of the members of his family regretted their curses, which would imply they weren't helpful. I also want to point out, aside from my theory, that we really don't have much information on how the boons and curses really work. Unless the Nightwatcher specifically says "This is gonna happen from now on, and that's your curse", I think it's very possible that people feel certain effects but misinterpret the precise nature of the curse. A running theme of Brandon's books is that the characters don't usually fully understand the magic systems, and our information is always filtered through their eyes.

In any case, I'm fully ready to be proven wrong when Oathbringer comes out. 

[Argel he/him]

23 hours ago, Ecthelion III said:

So if I'm reading this right, Adonalsium IS all of the forms of Investiture in all the worlds combined?

 

3 hours ago, Figberts said:

Yes, that would make sense. He is a giant spren of all the forms of investiture. What if somebody bonded him?

If you read that quote in context, Brandon is saying that "spren" is the Roshar term for Investiture that is alive. He is not saying that "spren" is a Realmatics term.

 

2 hours ago, BeskarKomrk said:

aravangian is dumb sometimes

He's also smart sometimes. The curse could be the fluctuation, or that how empathetic he is inversely related to how smart he is, or more likely both.

Edited June 15, 2016 by Argel

[Ecthelion III he/him]

Well, a spren is "Investiture that is alive", and "the people of Roshar would probably call Adonalsium a spren", so doesn't that mean that Adonalsium is Investiture that is alive?

[Iarwainiel I she/her]

Xaladin, I have thought this same thing. To me, the title "Old Magic" feels like pre-Honor/Cultivation, and (just my opinion) it feels like a square peg in a round hole to see Nightwatcher's boons and curses as "of Cultivation." Other posters in this thread make some great points about how Cultivation isn't just about things growing, but to my mind it just doesn't quite fit: Cultivation should end up with a net positive outcome, and Nightwatcher's plus/minus dealings seem like they have a net neutral (or zero) sum. I am really looking forward to learning more about the history of Roshar - maybe there'll be some hints in the upcoming anthology that will give us a better clue about the Old Magic.

[Sam Script he/him]

On 6/14/2016 at 11:35 AM, Ecthelion III said:

In that same quote, Brandon says:

 

 

So if I'm reading this right, Adonalsium IS all of the forms of Investiture in all the worlds combined?

Yes, the idea of Adonalsium is probably from Spinoza's philosophy. He considers the God is equal to the whole universe. Each part of the cosmos, including us, is just a little, little piece of God.

To learn more concepts he adopted for Cosmere, you can check out the "Development" part of entry "Cosmere" in Coppermind and theories in Wikipedia.

[Ecthelion III he/him]

2 hours ago, Sam Script said:

Yes, the idea of Adonalsium is probably from Spinoza's philosophy. He considers the God is equal to the whole universe. Each part of the cosmos, including us, is just a little, little piece of God.

So kind of like Hinduism?

[Argel he/him]

8 hours ago, Ecthelion III said:

doesn't that mean that Adonalsium is Investiture that is alive

Again, context. It's an oversimplification by a mostly Cosmere unware people.

[Ecthelion III he/him]

Though at this point it's all theorization since we know little to nothing about Adonalsium.

[Argel he/him]

Right, but the point is that Brandon is not going to make some clarification about Realmatics in the context of a mostly Cosmere unaware people. If Khriss said it, that would be much more interesting. But in the context of Roshar, it's not that interesting beyond understanding what Roshar thinks about the Cosmere.

Edited June 15, 2016 by Argel

[Sam Script he/him]

3 hours ago, Ecthelion III said:

So kind of like Hinduism?

Well, I'm not sure which part of it do you mean. You mean everything is from god something?

Well most philosophy considered that, so that's not something special. The idea of Adonalsium is directly from Spinoza, I'm confident on that.

[Iarwainiel I she/her]

I still think the whole ideology sounds like Minbari beliefs from the Babylon 5 TV series: "...that the universe itself is sentient, and that the universe has the ability to break itself into many pieces and invests itself in every form of life" (quote from Wikipedia page on Minbari Religion). Maybe JMS got his idea from Spinoza too - I have no idea.

Edited June 15, 2016 by old aggie