The Spiritual Realm

[Elsecaller_17.5 he/him]

I was reading the coppermind page and wasn’t terribly pleased with the amount of info. Is there any speculation on the what and why of the spiritual realm that wouldn’t make it to the coppermind, or is it just a mystery to everyone? Please enlighten me if you can.

[Karger he/him]

35 minutes ago, Truthwatcher_17.5 said:

I was reading the coppermind page and wasn’t terribly pleased with the amount of info. Is there any speculation on the what and why of the spiritual realm that wouldn’t make it to the coppermind, or is it just a mystery to everyone? Please enlighten me if you can.

We don't actually know much about the spiritual realm.  Most of what we think we know is poorly understood speculation.  if you have specific questions we can try and answer them but honestly Hoid is the only individual who seems to have anything like a working knowledge of the place.

[not an Evil Librarian]

The Spiritual realm is... difficult to understand. I've always thought of the SR as the base of existence. It is what a person or object inherently IS that exists in the spiritual realm, while the cognitive realm contains the perceptions of people and objects. The Physical realm is where the people and objects are. I know that's confusing, but this is kind of a deep subject and, not one we know much about.

SH Spoiler

 

 

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 Advanced issues found

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Spoiler

Fuzz describes the three realms like this:

The spiritual realm is a source of light,

The physical realm is the surface the light falls upon,

And the cognitive realm is the space in between.

 

[Elsecaller_17.5 he/him]

Thanks for the responses, I’m kinda at a point where I don’t know what I don’t know so I’ll just hope the question is answered in the next two years.

[RShara she/her]

3 hours ago, Truthwatcher_17.5 said:

I was reading the coppermind page and wasn’t terribly pleased with the amount of info. Is there any speculation on the what and why of the spiritual realm that wouldn’t make it to the coppermind, or is it just a mystery to everyone? Please enlighten me if you can.

As others have said, we honestly don't know much about the Spiritual Realm. We know it exists, that it's time and location independent, that you can see possible futures and the past in it, that it's where (most) investiture dwells, so to speak, but that's about it.

The Coppermind isn't really a place where people put speculation, unless it's pretty firm speculation and even then, it's marked. It's meant to be an encyclopedia of sorts, so it mostly only has concrete information.

[Weltall]

2 hours ago, Truthwatcher_17.5 said:

Thanks for the responses, I’m kinda at a point where I don’t know what I don’t know so I’ll just hope the question is answered in the next two years.

Uhhhhh, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a lot of information so soon. While we do have a good number of Cosmere projects expected to release in that window, it's unlikely that we'll get a lot of information on the Spiritual Realm in any of them. White Sand is set before anything else in the Cosmere and the person who'd be most helpful in informing us is, at the time of the story, completely in the dark about this sort of thing. The Lost Metal's not likely to give us much since we know so much is being set up for Era 3 and Scadrial doesn't currently have a convenient way to hop between Realms other than Harmony's Perpendicularity, so them learning about the Spiritual isn't likely. At best we might get more tidbits on mechanics related to the Spiritual Realm if some ferrings or medallions for the appropriate metals show up. Rhythm of War's also unlikely to give us much because everyone has more pressing concerns and most of what we get on other Realms from SA has to do with the Cognitive Realm.

Really, this is the sort of thing that I'm not expecting an in-depth explanation of until maybe the back half of SA, if not Dragonsteel or MB4.

[not an Evil Librarian]

7 hours ago, Weltall said:

Really, this is the sort of thing that I'm not expecting an in-depth explanation of until maybe the back half of SA, if not Dragonsteel or MB4.

I doubt we will even truly understand it then. The SR seems like the type of thing that is beyond a mortals comprehension. we might learn some of the mechanics, but I don't think we will ever have a true understanding.

[Scion of the Mists]

As you pointed out, the Coppermind generally deals with things that have been confirmed; it mostly eschews speculation.  

A good alternative resource is Arcanum, a repository of all the the things that Brandon has told us about outside of the novels.  

Here's what we have on the Spiritual Realm: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?tags=spiritual+realm.  

[blackout8444 he/him]

In addition, if you feel like learning more about the fandom's rampant speculation in addition to the little that we do know, there are two Shardcast episodes which might help you. 

Here are the links.

https://www.17thshard.com/news/shardcast/shardcast-language-and-connection-r499/

https://www.17thshard.com/news/shardcast/shardcast-spiritual-properties-connection-identity-fortune-r500/

 

Edited July 23, 2019 by blackout8444