What Is a “Soul” in the Cosmere?

[Confused]

On Discord, we recently talked about souls and Spiritwebs. Most there think these are identical terms. I’m not so sure, but the differences don’t matter. More interesting is Brandon’s concept of soul. I quote relevant WoBs in full at the end by bracketed number.

Cosmere Souls Defined

Brandon says, [1] “a person's Spiritual aspect [is] a mix of their connections to places, people, and times with raw investiture. The soul, you might say.” The soul is the “perfect version” of that person. Elsewhere he adds, [2] “each person is a node” between “concepts” in a Spiritweb. [3] This WoB says something similar.

Here’s how I read Brandon: Each soul (a Spiritweb “node”) exists at the intersection of its Connections to its “place, people and time.” The soul’s sDNA is made from the local Shard’s Investiture.

A. These four elements define a cosmere soul – what it’s made of, where it’s located in space and time, and whom it relates to. Brandon makes no moral claims for souls. Even inanimate objects have souls.

B. Cosmere souls change moment by moment as Connections form, grow, wither and die. We meet new people, time goes by; we forget old friends. This is why Shai’s soul stamps are applied to the emperor daily.

C. Brandon says [1] “your age is part of your Connection to places, people and times.” TLR died because his soul knew his true age.

D. [4] People have Physical DNA, Spiritual DNA and Cognitive DNA. [5] sDNA is “inherited similarly, but not 100% identically, to regular DNA.” [6] On Scadrial, one identical twin might be Mistborn and the other not. [7] Atium and lerasium are “just normal matter…wrapped in the Spiritual. The Spiritual DNA…is what makes it magical.”

E. Even after death, [8] “the spiritweb doesn't completely break down (just like your body doesn't immediately break down.) Even after a long time, there's a record of that spiritweb in the spiritual realm.” I think Brandon means your Spiritweb persists after you’ve physically died as long as people remember you in your place and time. These people stay Connected to you. As they die and memory of you fades and ends, information entropy fully claims your Spiritweb “record.”

Allik tells Marasi how souls and Connections work (BoM Chapter 22, Kindle p. 302):

Quote

“The visitor always has to wear the medallion. It’s filled with Connection, yah? Blank Connection, to no place. But Connection can’t just be connected to nothing, so when you tap it, it reaches out and connects you to the place where you are. Makes your soul think you were raised in this place instead, so your language changes.”

…

“Then why do you have an accent still?” Marasi asked. “If your brain thinks it was raised here?”

“Ah,” Allik said, raising his finger. “My soul thinks I was raised here, in your lands, but it knows that I am Malwish by descent, and that parents are from Wiestlow, so I cannot help but have an accent, yah? I got it from them. It is how the medallions always work.”

Allik changes his Connection to speak the local language because “Connection can’t just be connected to nothing.” His soul still recognizes his genome and place of origin, giving him his distinctive accent.

[FWIW, the main reason I believe your Spiritweb includes more than your soul is “Connection can’t just be connected to nothing.” IMO, the Connected souls themselves (your mother and your planet, for example) are part of your Spiritweb but not part of your soul.]

How Does a New Type of Soul Form?

I believe Spiritual Realm Investiture forms a new type of soul when a mind defines that soul. Adonalsium designed cosmere life and created the new soul form (its sDNA) for each species.

I think a Shardworld’s collective mind defines the souls of its non-living objects. In TES (Day Thirty, Kindle p. 75), Shai tells Gaotona:

Quote

“We think about windows, we know about windows; what is and isn’t a window takes on . . . meaning, in the Spiritual Realm. Takes on life, after a fashion.”

Shai believes collective thought creates a window’s soul. Pattern echoes Shai in this conversation with Shallan (WoR, Chapter 24, Kindle pp. 308-309):

Quote

“This table has four legs. Would you not say that is a truth, independent of my perspective?”

Pattern buzzed uncertainly. “What is a leg? Only as it is defined by you. Without a perspective, there is no such thing as a leg, or a table. There is only wood.”

“You’ve told me the table perceives itself this way.”

“Because people have considered it, long enough, as being a table,” Pattern said. “It becomes truth to the table because of the truth the people create for it.”

IOW, Shadesmar’s collective perception defines the table’s soul. Its soul is “the truth the people create for it.”

Free-floating fragments of Spiritual Realm Investiture IMO also don’t form a soul and become a splinter until some mind defines them. These fragments may become sentient by themselves; or a Shard may grant it sentience; or a Shard may imprint some ideal onto its Investiture (like Honorblades and Divine Breath); or the collective mind defines it. Pattern says “Spren are . . . power . . . shattered power. Power given thought by the perceptions of men.” (WoR, Chapter 24, Kindle pp. 309.) In ironic reversal of Adonalsium’s creation of men, men define the souls of the “little bits of god” that constitute spren.

Relevant WoBs

This Spoiler quotes in full each cited WoB by bracketed number.

Spoiler

WoB 1:

Quote

Doom-Slayer

So how do the exact mechanics of Feruchemy in relation to Compounding work?

This confusion is primarily around how [the Lord Ruler] gets his near infinite age.

Okay. So first off, I understand the concept of how they work. Feruchemy is net zero, Allomancy is net positive, combine them and you end with a net positive Feruchemy ability.

So how Feruchemy normally works... you take say weight, store half your normal weight and then you can access it whenever you want. So you (originally X weight) are taking A weight, storing it, and then you are at (X-A) weight, with access to A. So we have a metalmind that store magnitude with the efficiency of how its received based on how quickly or slowly it is drawn upon.

All the metalminds except atium seem to act this way. Atium seems to work as storing magnitude/time rather than just magnitude. The way I understand it is that say a 30 year old person becomes 50 years old for 1 day, this would give access to 20 years difference for a 1 day period.

The Lord Ruler then exploits this by gaining access to say 20 years difference over 10 days(magnification by compounding) which he then slowly feeds into himself to lower his age.

Why this difference? Im assuming its to maintain a neutral "body age" because with just magnitude a person could permanently make themselves younger by compounding.

With just magnitude of "20 years of youth" being stored, if the lord ruler magnified it, he could turn it into "200 years of youth" and then he would never need the constant stream off youth(and wouldn't of died without the bracelets)

Hope this makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

All right, so there are a few things you have to understand about cosmere magics to grok all of this.

First, is that magics can be hacked together. You'll see more of this in the future of the cosmere, but an early one is the hack here--where you're essentially powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. (A little more complex than that, but it seems like you get the idea.)

The piece you're missing is the nature of a person's Spiritual aspect. This is similar to a Platonic idea--the idea that there's a perfect version of everyone somewhere. It's a mix of their connections to places, people, and times with raw investiture. The soul, you might say.

(Note that over time, a person's perception of themselves shapes their cognitive aspect as well, and the cognitive aspect can interfere with the spiritual aspect trying to make the physical aspect repair itself.)

Healing in the cosmere often works by aligning your physical self with your spiritual self--making the physical regrow. More powerful forms of investiture can repair the soul as well.

However, your age is part of your Connection to places, people, and times. Your soul "knows" things, like where you were born, what investiture you are aligned with, and--yes--how old you are. When you're healing yourself, you're restoring yourself to a perfect state--when you're done, everything is good. When you're changing your age, however, you are transforming yourself to something unnatural. Against what your soul understands to be true.

So the spiritual aspect will push for a restoration to the way you should be. With this compounding hack, you're not changing connection; it's a purely Physical Realm change.

This dichotomy cannot remain for long. And the greater the disparity, the more pressure the spirit will exert. Ten or twenty years won't matter much. A thousand will matter a lot. So the only way to use compounding to change your age is to store up all this extra youth in a metalmind, then be constantly tapping it to counteract the soul's attempt to restore you to how you should be.

Yes, all of this means there are FAR more efficient means of counteracting aging than the one used by the Lord Ruler. It's a hack, and not meant to be terribly efficient. Eventually, he wouldn't have been able to maintain himself this way at all. Changing connection (or even involving one’s Cognitive Aspect a little more) would have been far more efficient, though actively more difficult.

Though this is the point where I ping [Peter Ahlstrom] and get him to double-check all this. Once in a while, my fingers still type the wrong term in places. (See silvereye vs tineye.)

Source.

WoB 2:

Quote

Questioner

My theory currently on spiritwebs is that they are-- when they exist on the Spiritual Realm a person exists as nodes connected between concepts, Physical makeup, and whatnot, that’s what makes up your Spiritual DNA.

Brandon Sanderson

Mmhmm.

Questioner

Is there a different set of nodes for each person or do they all kind of share?

Brandon Sanderson

You're kind of imagining it the wrong way, each person is a node.

Source.

WoB 3:

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psychomanexe

I think that in the Spiritual realm a person's spiritweb sort of manifests as a collection of "nodes" which are the Forms of their body/mind/subconscious, and these nodes are connected by "lines" which are interactions between the pure Forms. These lines are what actually make up the person's character, how the body is "supposed" to be (barring accidents/disease, basically what magical healing attempts to restore the body to), as well as what interactions with investiture the person can use (what magic systems they have access to)

Am I completely off base here or should I keep thinking about this?

Brandon Sanderson

This is a good line to be thinking along.

Source.

WoB 4:

Quote

Questioner (paraphrased)

In order to use magic from one world on another world, do they need a bit of [the first world's] Shard with you?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It helps a lot. But there are other ways to do it. What's going on in the Cosmere is people have 3 sets of DNA. They have Physical DNA, Spiritual DNA, and Cognitive DNA. Their Spiritual DNA is what encodes the magic system into them, their Investiture. So if you can find a way to rewrite your Spiritual DNA, you can do all kinds of funky things. That's what Hemalurgy does. It rips off a piece of someone else's soul, staples it to yours. So if you went with a Hemalurgic spike to the right place, ripped off a piece of someone's soul and stapled it to yourself, you could create short circuits that will let you do all kinds of goofy stuff.

Source.

WoB 5:

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Argent (paraphrased)

Is spiritual DNA inherited the same as regular DNA?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Inherited similarly, but not 100% identically, to regular DNA.

Source.

 WoB 6:

Quote

Questioner (paraphrased)

If two people are identical twins, and one is a Mistborn, will the second be Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No. They could have different Spiritual DNA.

Source.

 WoB 7:

Quote

Viper (paraphrased)

So in cosmere, does physics work the same way in the Physical Realm as it does in our world? Specifically, particle physics; and are atoms made up of protons and neutrons and electrons, and is light photons, etc?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

Viper (paraphrased)

So what's at the core of an atom of atium? Ate-teum? Also how do you pronounce it? At-teum?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes. And the matter is just normal matter, but it's wrapped in the Spiritual. The Spiritual DNA [or something] is what makes it magical.

Source.

 WoB 8:

Quote

Argent

Is death in the Cosmere a two-stage process? It seems to me like (under normal circumstances) the body dies first, sending the mind fully in the Cognitive Realm; the soul, presumably, remains in the Spiritual for the entire process. I am a little unclear on what happens after that though - what is it that passes into the Beyond, just the mind? Does the soul / spiritual aspect / Spiritweb just kind of... break down in the Spiritual Realm, turn into free investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. It's a two stage process, and most of what you said is correct. The odd thing is, though, that the spiritweb doesn't completely break down (just like your body doesn't immediately break down.) Even after a long time, there's a record of that spiritweb in the spiritual realm.

Oversleep

Wait wait wait. If there is a "corpse" of Spiritweb (so to speak) and actual, physical corpse is also there... Could it be still viable for Hemalurgy? Could it be still viable for Hemalurgy if you really know what you're doing and have some useful powers (manipulating Connection comes to mind)?

Could you patch the remnants of the Spiritweb and staple it to the body and end up with some zombie-zombie Lifeless? You'd still need to give it a mind but I figure Awakening is just doing that?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Source.

 

Edited June 21, 2018 by Confused

[Calderis]

Brandon's use of the soul has always frustrated me. 

Hemalurgy obviously targets the spiritweb, and we are repeatedly told that it rips off pieces of the soul. 

At other times he uses the word soul, usually in connection to Cognitive Shadows, to speak about the Cognitive aspect. 

In relation to what is commonly called the "soul" in our world, the thing that is you, that controls and animates the meat vessel that is our bodies, I think the closest analog is actually the Cognitive. It's what persists as a "ghost" with the personality of someone who has died. 

In contrast, I feel that the Spiritual aspect, the spiritweb, is just information. Your age. Your height. Your magical potential. And of course the connections to everything else. 

At this point, I try to avoid using the word "soul" at all, because the conflation of the Spiritual and Cognitive has just frustrated me too much. 

Edited June 21, 2018 by Calderis

[Slimy_Slider]

Might be one of those "in-world" definitions about what is or isn't a soul, so it's hard to be sure. Different places and people have different views and the idea of a soul is complex and seems very perspective-based. I recall Brandon saying something about how The Beyond, and afterlives in general, is something he is leaving very open in the Cosmere, so the exact relation of spiritual realm/spiritweb to the soul is a question that probably won't be answered.

[Confused]

@Calderis, Brandon does use “soul” and “Spiritweb” interchangeably. Technically, I think a Spiritweb includes the Connected souls, since Allik says “Connection can’t just be connected to nothing.” A “web” requires Connected points. But I see no practical difference between the definitions.

Except for a magic user’s extra sDNA, I agree a cosmere soul is “just information.” Each soul’s “record” represents its space-time location and the souls it Connects with. The record also includes the Spiritual Realm aspect of each Physical and Cognitive Realm trait. This record is imprinted on the local Shard’s “raw Investiture.” This record is changeable.

Your personality, your “you-ness,” is mostly Cognitive, but IMO that’s not your soul. I think changes in your “you-ness” automatically re-write the soul’s record in the Spiritual Realm - people, place and time Connections are editable values. The body holds physical traits, the mind holds personhood, and the soul holds the “perfect record” of that information.

I see a Cognitive Shadow as a mind and soul that loses its Connection to the Physical Realm. IIRC, Brandon’s unclear whether Cognitive Shadows retain their original souls. What if the mind writes its record on different Investiture than its original soul’s Investiture? Kelsier imprinted his mind on the Well’s Investiture. Is that the same soul as his original soul because it retains the same record? Brandon would probably tell us “some in-world scholars would say….”

@Slimy_Slider, as I see it, Brandon doesn’t imbue cosmere souls with morality. (He explicitly says this about the Shards.) IMO, the idea of cosmere soul as Spiritual Realm information record is neither “complex” nor “perspective-based.” I think cosmere souls have nothing to do with “The Beyond, and afterlives in general.” I agree Brandon defers those questions to in-world and our own sensibilities.

Thanks for the comments!

Edited June 28, 2018 by Confused

[Weltall]

21 minutes ago, Confused said:

I see a Cognitive Shadow as a mind and soul that loses its Connection to the Physical Realm. IIRC, Brandon’s unclear whether Cognitive Shadows retain their original souls. What if the mind writes its record on different Investiture than its original soul’s Investiture? Kelsier imprinted his mind on the Well’s Investiture. Is that the same soul as his original soul because it retains the same record? Brandon would probably tell us “some in-world scholars would say….”

No doubt he would... Anyhow, in an instance that's very much Brandon being fuzzy on the whole 'soul' thing we have his explanation for why Returned count as Cognitive Shadows.

Quote

Argent

When you say that the Returned are cognitive shadows, are they shadows of the people they were pre-death? In other words, is Lightsong Llarimar's cognitive shadow stapled to his body with a Divine Breath?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, they are. (The evidence in the books is Lightsong obtaining some of the memories his pre-death soul had.)

Footnote: It’s likely that “Llarimar” is supposed to be “Stennimar”
source

Now, this gets fuzzy because is memory a Cognitive thing or is it a Spiritual one? If it's the latter, the fact that Kelsier doesn't notice any change memory-wise from the process of becoming saturated with the Investiture from the Well would suggest that it's the same soul, just with extra Investiture. Think of it as Kelsier's Soul Plus. Given how Cosmere healing works by essentially forcing your Spiritual ideal into your Cognitive/Physical aspects (with the former acting as a potential block at times, like Kaladin's brands) the appearance of Kelsier as the Sovereign also suggests that it's his original Spiritual template at work, with the associated scars and everything.

In the thought exercise of having a soul saturated with different Investiture, I don't think it would make a huge difference. We know that it wasn't the Well itself that was important but the huge amount of Investiture it represented and another Perpendicularity could have been used in the same way, so if he'd somehow been able to take a dip in, say, Cultivation's Perpendicularity it shouldn't have changed Kelsier by that much. Given the issues he had serving as a temporary Vessel, it's clear that being saturated with Preservation-flavored Investiture to become a Cognitive Shadow didn't help him either Ascend (he needed the Ire Connection orb) or keep that power from fighting against him and his tendency towards Ruin-ness.