Runes on the staff and black powers

[sammadhi]

We still have no meaning of the runes.....ugh!!! Caerroil Wildwood seemed sorrowful of the future for the forrestrals and the woods. maybe he inscribed a way to return through the staffs power. sunder and hollian tried to expand the forests with the staff but had no lore to do it right. maybe those inscriptions might be related to that possibility!!!

The unnatural lore of Vain + Findail's outrage + burning of the wood with BOTE + The Lamentation of Wildwoods runes + Linden"s overwhelming grief. all of these components make linden powerful enough to stop 5 caesures in a slit second when Jeremiah was threatened. once she stops being emo and gets jiggy with it, i think her limitations will be like wildmagic. unstoppable!!!

[earthbrah]

sammadhi wrote:

once she stops being emo and gets jiggy with it, i think her limitations will be like wildmagic. unstoppable!!!

I tend to agree. Though she's exceeded her own strength already in these Chronicles, I don't think we've truly seen her come fully into her power with the Staff. Kevin's Dirt has held her back.

I also like the idea of the runes being there for the Forestals to maybe find a way back. I don't think that's what they're there for, but then I don't have a clear idea myself what their purpose is, so...

[lurch]

We still have no meaning of the runes.

You think so? I like playing The Runes,,as another "Mystery" set up by the author..like TC and Jerry of FR...The author dropped clues all along about the real nature of TC and Jerry. So...I believe hes been dropping clues about the Runes all along. ..Earthbrah, we've been talking about it for awhile.." Origin" .As you and sam put it.." getting back to.."..In Lindens case..its the Linden Before she was thoroughly messed up by her parents..unencumbering herself from that corruption. How the Runes make that possible...well..perhaps its just a matter of Linden ,,changing her " perspective" of the Runes as they are on the Staff..? Maybe alls it takes to " read" them is a mirror? ..like we see ourselves in a mirror..Water reflects! The Runes are a fascinating Mystery,,maybe thats the point. Maybe they never get figured out,,mystery for the sake of mystery. The Desire to solve the Mystery drives us to Explore and That is what is Really Important,,?

[earthbrah]

The runes gave her a supernal relationship with Law. Or something like that is stated at the end of FR as Linden was wielding both wild magic and Earthpower together. Need to reread that section...

You can't take it with you and you can't go back...but perhaps you can recreate it...I agree that origin is somehow key to the final conclusion of how to deal with despite, but how it works out in the particulars, I'm not sure of.

I agree that Donaldson has been dropping clues about the runes all along, even mockingly dangling them in front of us at times. Linden's perspective clearly must change for her to be able to do whatever it is she will need to do in the last act. I like the notion of the reflecting water, of seeing the runes backwards, and thus absorbing their meaning. Cool stuff!

[shadowbinding shoe]

There are two places where the Staff's runes are prominent:

1) When Linden brings Covenant back to the living

2) During the fight in this book where they shine silver against the blackness of her Staff.

It seems in both cases they are restraining her passions and channeling them into productive directions.

The One Forest is said to be a forbidding on the Worm's destructiveness. Why? It's explained most clearly in the end of AATE when Covenant falls into the memory of the Forestal-meet. Rock is hard but the Oneness of Life that is the One Forest makes it a thing of purpose and neverending continuity. It unites the Land into a force of Life that defeats death, unlife and antilife.

[earthbrah]

shadowbinding shoe wrote:

The One Forest is said to be a forbidding on the Worm's destructiveness. Why? It's explained most clearly in the end of AATE when Covenant falls into the memory of the Forestal-meet. Rock is hard but the Oneness of Life that is the One Forest makes it a thing of purpose and neverending continuity. It unites the Land into a force of Life that defeats death, unlife and antilife.

It's interesting how you state that life defeats death, unlife and antilife. Makes me think of how aperspectivity can "defeat" unperspectivity, perspectivity and non-perspectivity.

Originally, humans existed in a non-perspective state with respect to the world or nature. All was; an undifferentiated and awareless dream was the world of man. This state or experience of life mutated over time to become unperspectival where human's experience of life was essentially pure imagination. Then transformed again to become perspectival, or being dominated by opposites, and now we are on the threshold of another mutation of consciousness into the integral and aperspectival where all previous AND future aspects of life and our experience of it merge into one solid. Therein, all these previously (and seemingly) separate qualities become transparent in the new whole or unity. They return to the original state of coexisting in cooperative harmony, but with the experiencer now being aware of them, holding them together simultaneously as one.

I think, lurch, that the answers are there about the runes...we're just not seeing them yet, and neither is Linden or anyone else. They're part of a reality that, in the incessant sequentialness of time, hasn't happened yet, but will happen. They're a mystery, the solution for which is probably staring us in the face as readers, but since we are not able to go beyond our particular lenses of reception, we don't see it yet either. We are Linden.

Assuming what I wrote above as being true, then her healing (her reunifying those disparate aspects of her being, becoming whole like her son and TC) should allow her access to the knowledge of what the runes are for. Covenant has already gone beyond the limitations of mortal life, participated in infinity, and returned, only to seal himself off from that state so that he could be whole. He's become something new!, and we don't know what that is yet. So exciting!

Origin is like God: all encompassing, undifferentiated, whole, pure, innocent...like the One Forest. We all came from this state at some point, and will return to it in time...as we live and breathe...

I believe that Wildwood carved those runes in Linden's staff to enable her to find an answer to his question about truth and beauty passing utterly from life, or whatever. He did not know of her proper time, or the things she needs to accomplish to help preserve the Land from Foul. Yet, I think he did know in a non-knowing way; not so much intuition as an awareless recognition on his part of an aspect of the original unity (of which he was integrally a part, at least as far as the One Forest goes) which he perceives in some dim and opalescent way from Linden and the lamentable blackness of her Staff.

[lurch]

earthbrha..yes..much like the manacles for Esmer made by the wayhim..the Runes are an answer for a question not asked yet..?..Yes, much is pointing to the future, and that is exciting. The elements of Creating a Future appear to be coming together.

[shadowbinding shoe]

Do you feel there will be enough room in the last book to resolve (and explore) all these themes? It feels like there is too much hanging in the air for one book to lay to rest.

[lurch]

Shoe..yes, that thought also came to me. I'm sure the author already knew..knows..how he will end it all. I have..small short moments of possibilities that come and go,,but there is always the Authors Way that historically has out done whatever I was imagining. So..I'm not worried.

[earthbrah]

Nor am I worried that SRD will find a way to resolve all the problems being faced and unite the saga as a whole. But after having read AATE, I can now more clearly see why SRD was afraid to tackle this narrative!

DUDE, he's got a tough job ahead of him...TLD is gonna be packed!

[Vraith]

Not to be too reductive of beauty/metaphor, but analogically:
Earthpower is the natural power and flow, the staff the dynamo in a dam, lot's of power there, but to really do work you need more structure to collect/concentrate, step up the voltage, and direct it...that's the runes.
The blackness: [stepping away from that analogy] it is the nature, even of good laws, to enable...sometimes even cause...dark deeds, and for the execution to depend on the purpose/intentions of those with power/authority.

[drew]

I think that maybe the Runes when translated, will be SWMNBN's name.

[ninjaboy]

I'd like to think that the runes will empower the staff to help restore/remake the Land (and the world) to what it was like in the First Chrons - or even before that, before the ROD..

BUT who knows.. It might do something completely unexpected.

I'm still wondering whether she will end up answering the forestal's question..

[Lord Zombiac]

once she stops being emo and gets jiggy with it

I love this description.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

The runes inscribed by Wildwood keep getting mentioned together with the strange, rune-like stains on Linden's jeans that she got in the Verge of Wandering. Those stains are important enough that Caerroil Wildwood himself comments on them.

I suspect that the runes on the staff will help Linden find her way to victory in the end just like the stains helped her find her way out of the hallucination induced by the Feroce.

I also still suspect that this Staff is the same one that Berek will wind up wielding. This, of course, requires the Staff to go backwards in time through another caesure.

[earthbrah]

Hashi Lebwohl wrote:

I also still suspect that this Staff is the same one that Berek will wind up wielding. This, of course, requires the Staff to go backwards in time through another caesure.

It would also require the Staff to lose the lamentable blackness that it acquired in Melenkurion Skyweir.

[Vraith]

I also still suspect that this Staff is the same one that Berek will wind up wielding. This, of course, requires the Staff to go backwards in time through another caesure.

[/color]

Not only do I not think this will happen, I will be really annoyed and disappointed if it does. There are two, discrete, never to be united Staves of Law...fundamentally different in origin, kind, and structure.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

That is why it is only a suspicion of mine. I have to go back to LFB and re-read the description of the original Staff. I know that it had runes carved onto it and we all know that the heels are the same but I don't recall anything beyond that right now. For both staves to be the same by being sent backward in time would be...stereotypically science-fiction...and doesn't apply to the Chronicles.

[ninjaboy]

I also still suspect that this Staff is the same one that Berek will wind up wielding. This, of course, requires the Staff to go backwards in time through another caesure.

[/color]

Not only do I not think this will happen, I will be really annoyed and disappointed if it does. There are two, discrete, never to be united Staves of Law...fundamentally different in origin, kind, and structure.

Well you don't specifically know the origin and structure of 'Berek's staff' do you?
I mean we're given hints, but until we're right there watching him make it it's pretty much unknown..

[Vraith]

I also still suspect that this Staff is the same one that Berek will wind up wielding. This, of course, requires the Staff to go backwards in time through another caesure.

[/color]

Not only do I not think this will happen, I will be really annoyed and disappointed if it does. There are two, discrete, never to be united Staves of Law...fundamentally different in origin, kind, and structure.

Well you don't specifically know the origin and structure of 'Berek's staff' do you?
I mean we're given hints, but until we're right there watching him make it it's pretty much unknown..

Well, I don't believe everything we know about the first one is a total lie...that will annoy and disappoint, too...but it ain't gonna happen, and there will be/are/have been 2 separate S's OL.