Kevin's Watch

Brandon Sanderson has this Cosmere or something for the backdrop for a lot of his novels, and there's this plot involving an entity known as Adonalsium breaking into 16 (I think) shards, each one containing a different form of divine power (or something).

Spoiler

Ruin and Preservation from the MISTBORN series, for example, were shards of Adonalsium.

Now I was reading Answer to Job by Carl Jung and a footnote on pages 19-20 described these antitheses to the sephiroth (whatever those are), these evil "shards" that had to be broken off from God's power of revelation.

So I know it's a stretch, but might Sanderson's metaphysics for his Cosmere have drawn some inspiration from Jewish mysticism?

Mighara Sovmadhi wrote:
So I know it's a stretch, but might Sanderson's metaphysics for his Cosmere have drawn some inspiration from Jewish mysticism?

It's not a stretch at all. I don't know specifically about anything Cosmere-related, though I probably did once...because I saw an interview somewhere quite some time ago in which he specifically mentions Qaballah [however that's spelled]...along with several other mythological/mystical systems he's fascinated with and uses as resources/inspiration.

I thought the frontispiece of The Way of Kings looked very Kaballistic. From what I understand, Sanderson is a Mormon. If you look into Mormon mysticism, there is plenty there to draw on (way outside the pale of orthodox Christianity).