#Reality vs. Simulation

[wickedzeevyln]

Imp — ep. 6

Episode 6 (Girl in the Indigo Sweat Suit) She sits there unfazed. The frosty air is as cruel as wasps in these woods—they sting, but she is not one of them. No. She is an anomaly in the madness. Her freckled face unnerves even the darkness. She sits there watching the woods uproot and plant themselves back into the dirt, under the groaning sky. She watches. The scarred people scramble, weave…

[the-most-humble-blog]

🌀 The Simulation Doesn’t Owe You Closure, Sweetie

✨ The world is under no obligation to make sense to your primate-ass brain. 🧠🐒

It never signed a contract. It doesn’t owe you a neat plotline, a moral arc, or even a coherent beginning. You're demanding Shakespeare from a kaleidoscope of atoms mid-fart. Let that sink in.

👁️ You Woke Up Today and Just... Assumed Everything Was Still Real?

🛌 You opened your eyes. ☀️ The sun “rose.” 💬 Your brain whispered, “Same planet, same timeline, same you.”

But what evidence do you actually have?

You don’t know where the sun was five minutes ago.

You don’t know your memories are real — you just have a highly convincing slideshow in your skull.

You’re trusting your meat processor because it feels consistent.

Feelings are not facts. 🥴 Neither is “breakfast.” �� You cooked it in a dream. 🎭 And your dream cooked you.

🌌 Alternate Hypothesis:

👉 The entire universe may have booted up this morning ⚡️ Fully formed 🗃️ With backlogged memories 📚 Fake Wikipedia articles 📸 Childhood photos pre-installed

...just so you wouldn’t freak out when you looked in the mirror and said:

"Oh thank god, I’m still me."

But that “you”? That little voice saying “still me”? 🎤 Might be the software. Not the speaker.

💫 You Ever Wonder Why Dreams Feel More Like Home Than Real Life?

Because they don’t ask for logic. They don’t care about time. They don’t require coherence.

And your brain... loves it.

🌪 Dreams are where your inner tyrant gets to speak. 🦴 Your subconscious gets to lick its wounds and howl at nothing. 🐍 Your fears wear your face, and your fantasies violate causality.

Meanwhile, “reality” asks you to pay rent.

Which one sounds more like base reality to you?

🪞 Your “I Am” Is a Lie of Convenience

Say it with me:

"I...am."

👃 But your nose bacteria said it too. 💩 So did the E. coli in your gut. 🦠 Your biome — the literal orgy of germs you walk around with — voted unanimously on your behalf.

You’re not a “person.” You’re a coalition of goo, pretending to have a name.

You're basically a haunted Roomba in a trench coat, gaslighting yourself with words like "consciousness."

☠️ Death? You Think You Know Death?

You think it’s an ending? A door? A fade to black?

👻 Some theories suggest you never actually die. You just quantum leap into another version of reality where you didn’t.

🚙 You crash the car.

🎲 Reality branches.

🧍One version of you dies.

👤 Another keeps driving, blissfully unaware.

Congratulations. You’re quantumly immortal.

Now live with that.

🧩 Nothing You Believe Is Yours

🔄 Your preferences? Algorithmic.

💬 Your language? Colonial malware.

🎶 Your music taste? Trauma harmonized.

🍔 Your favorite meal? A mouth-based memory of safety.

🧍‍♂️ Your personality? Copied and pasted from people who bullied you in 7th grade and won.

Everything you think is you is actually borrowed, imprinted, marketed, or stolen.

You’re just the crust forming on top.

👾 Thought Experiment:

Imagine you wake up tomorrow and everything is the same, but:

Gravity is 2% weaker

Everyone speaks your native tongue, but words now mean different things

The moon is slightly larger

Diddy is President

Would you notice? Would you even question it?

Or would you just scroll your phone, complain about gas prices, and say:

“Ugh. Mondays.”

Because here’s the horrifying truth:

Reality doesn’t need to be real to be consistent. 🧠 It just has to feel real long enough for you to shut up and go to work.

🕷 The Memory Trap

You can’t even prove you remember things accurately.

Your brain doesn’t store memories — 🧱 it reconstructs them. Like a trauma-themed Minecraft server.

So when someone says:

“But I remember that happening…”

Know this:

🎥 They don’t remember what happened. They remember remembering it once.

You're a feedback loop hallucinating confidence.

💃 You’re Dancing in a Dead Man’s Dream

What if everything you see is a ghost’s last vision before brain death?

🧬 What if you're the synaptic echo of someone else’s final moment — A projection flickering through dissolving tissue?

And your purpose?

To feel just enough agency to make death seem like it had meaning.

You were never supposed to wake up in the first place.

🎯 So What Now, Smart Guy?

You think you’ve got a grip on reality?

Cool. Name five sensations that are definitely real and not simulated.

Take your time. I’ll wait.

(Just kidding — time is fake too.)

And while you’re busy explaining your deep, spiritual certainty…

Let me ask you this:

🕵️‍♂️ Where were you in 1997? Be specific.

What socks were you wearing? What did the air smell like? What did Diddy do to you?

Exactly.

You don’t know.

Which means...

You don’t exist with the kind of continuity you think you do. You exist like a flickering cursor on a corrupted save file.

🧼 Clean on the surface. 🧟‍♂️ Rot underneath.

💣 The Final Blow:

You’ve never been “awake.” You’ve never been “alive.” You’ve only ever been stimulus fed to a frightened organism trying to rationalize entropy.

And the universe?

It was never “created.” It just booted up. No moral. No meaning. No arc.

Just inputs → outputs → extinction.

And all along you’ve been pretending:

“I get it now. I understand.”

Oh really?

Then why can’t you even remember if Diddy touched you, dumbass?

🧬 Reboot your expectations. Reality was never built to comfort you. It was built to run — and you’re just a background process.

🔻 CALL TO REALITY STACK 🔻

⚖️ Free Speech Disclaimer:

This is a work of satire. Unless it isn’t.

🔁 Reblog if your dream self is starting to feel more like you. 💬 Comment if you think “waking up” might be the real delusion. 📩 DM if you have memories that feel older than your body. 🧼 Wash your hands, but reality won't rinse off. 🔁 Share before the simulation changes your backstory again.

[omegaphilosophia]

Mental Objects vs. Virtual Objects

Both mental objects (thoughts, concepts, and imaginations) and virtual objects (digital artifacts, AI-generated entities, and simulated environments) challenge traditional notions of existence. While they share some similarities, they also have distinct differences in how they originate, function, and interact with the world.

1. Similarities Between Mental and Virtual Objects

1.1. Non-Physical Existence

Both exist without a direct material form.

A mental object (e.g., the idea of a unicorn) exists in the mind.

A virtual object (e.g., a character in a video game) exists in a digital space.

1.2. Dependence on a Substrate

Mental objects depend on biological cognition (the brain).

Virtual objects depend on computational processing (hardware/software).

Neither exists as standalone physical entities but requires a medium to be instantiated.

1.3. Ephemeral and Modifiable

Both can be created, changed, or erased at will.

A thought can be reimagined, just as a digital object can be edited or deleted.

They are not fixed like physical objects but dynamic in nature.

1.4. Representation-Based Existence

Both exist as representations rather than tangible things.

A mental image of a tree represents a tree but is not an actual tree.

A 3D-rendered tree in a virtual world represents a tree but is not physically real.

2. Differences Between Mental and Virtual Objects

2.1. Origin and Creation

Mental objects arise from individual cognition (thought, memory, imagination).

Virtual objects are created through external computation (coding, rendering, algorithms).

2.2. Subjectivity vs. Objectivity

Mental objects are subjective—they exist uniquely for the thinker.

Virtual objects are inter-subjective—they exist digitally and can be experienced by multiple people.

2.3. Interaction and Persistence

Mental objects are internal and exist only within the thinker’s mind.

Virtual objects exist externally in a digital system and can be interacted with by multiple users.

2.4. Stability Over Time

Mental objects are fleeting and can be forgotten or altered by an individual.

Virtual objects have greater persistence (e.g., stored in a database, backed up, retrievable).

2.5. Causality and Impact on the World

Mental objects influence individual perception and behavior but do not directly alter external reality.

Virtual objects can have real-world consequences (e.g., digital currencies, online identities, NFTs).

3. The Blurring Boundary: Where Do They Overlap?

AI-generated art is a virtual object that mimics mental creativity.

VR and AR technologies blend mental perception with digital objects.

Philosophical questions arise: Are virtual worlds just externalized thought spaces?

Conclusion

Mental objects and virtual objects are both non-physical, dynamic, and representation-based, but they differ in origin, persistence, and external impact. The digital age continues to blur the lines between thought and simulation, raising deeper questions about what it means for something to exist.

[macbethz]

im not saying magic is postmodernism but i am saying that a little bit

(Mark Pesce, “The Executable Dreamtime” from Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magic and the Occult // Frederick Jameson, The Cultural Turn Selected Writings on the Postmodern 1983-1998)

[simulanissolutions]

In recent years, immersive technologies like Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) have gained massive attention, reshaping industries and changing the way we interact with the world around us. From gaming to education, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail, these technologies are driving innovation. If you’re looking to explore these technologies, Simulanis stands out as a leader in this space, offering cutting-edge solutions to businesses across various sectors. Let's dive into how Simulanis, a Virtual Reality Development Company in India, Augmented Reality Development Company in India, and Mixed Reality Development Company in India, is at the forefront of this technological revolution.

[josephkravis]

Are We in a Simulation? Time to Hack Our Way Out! 🧑‍💻🤖

Simulation Theory. A fun thought.

Transitioning from a digital simulation to the real world, holding the key to truth. What’s On My Mind Today? What if everything we know—life, love, reality—is just a computer simulation? 🤔 Imagine we’re avatars 🎮 in a complex game run by some advanced AI 🤖, set in a chaotic period of history just to keep things interesting. If that’s true, shouldn’t we be working on a hack 🧑‍💻 to escape and…

[evilminji]

As I played No Man's Sky... It HIT Me.

My third eye is opened and I have reached a stage of enlightenment that's leaving me GIDDY. Holy fuckin shit.

Danny own SPACE GAMES~☆🎇✨️🌠

"Yeah, obviously?" you say, a little confused.

But stop an THINK about it. He can go INTO games! Doomed is a glitchy, limited, online mmo. Not some single player triple A. There are Space Simulators.

Sandbox games where you explore the galaxy.

Literally NOTHING stopping HIM from becoming a game developer. Hiring tech ghosts. Alien ghosts. Alien TECH ghosts. And producing an underground hit.

Sitting in the virtual, on an alien planet, in his space suit and just... listening to the wind. The pattern of toxic rain against the habitat.

The sense of PEACE he must feel? Just turn on creative mode or pick a peaceful sandbox game and just? Get to work. Terraform a planet. Built a settlement. Farm in a habitat on Mars. Slip into some VR game and just? Hang out on the orbital space station.

I can't even put it into words? How emotional I am kinda getting? Just imagining him step through a screen and onto alien grass. Just a big old peaceful field of alien flora, beneath an alien sky. No responsibilities. Just Space.

Getting to explore the cosmos and still come home. Not having to choose between Amity and the stars. Making some little habitat with knickknacks and a bunk, that he can just go hang out in. Listen to the sounds of an alien world. Sleep in a far off galaxy and be home for breakfast.

God he would GLOW. His joy would overflow.

The only thing I'd honestly worry about is his Obsession and the Fenton Family Fixation Tendency kicking in. Getting addicted to serene, seretonin-producing Fantasy, over stressful, anxiety-producing Reality. It would be understandable. And something to look out for.

Because it wouldn't even be insidious or malicious action. Just the nature of "this one is calming and feels nice" vs "this one is stressful" would do it. Who WOULD want to leave? But... you gotta balance. Because you aren't just ghost. You can't just wrap yourself in Space like a safety blanket. No matter HOW soothing and awesome it is.

But good God is he gonna have SO much practice for his eventual lair. Bet his virtual Bases are IMMACULATE.

@hdgnj @nerdpoe @the-witchhunter

[reveriedraffs]

۶ৎ MOVIES IDEAS TO SCRIPT IN YOUR ACTRESS DR ⠀ 𖥻 𝗢𝟭 ⠀ᰋ

— because your DR deserves cinematic masterpieces.

If you are a K-pop idol in your K-pop DR, you can use these ideas for movies you would work on or turn them into full K-dramas! 🎭

1. The Mirage Market

Genres: Fantasy | Mystery | Thriller | Comedy | Drama

Themes: The price of knowledge, temptation, fate vs. free will, the power of forgotten things

Plot:

You receive an invitation—a slip of parchment tucked into your pocket by unseen hands. It lists an address and a single promise: The Mirage Market welcomes all. Bring what you can afford to lose.

Curiosity pulls you in. You step through an unmarked alleyway and suddenly, the world shifts. The market stretches before you like a dream—twisting alleyways filled with glowing lanterns, merchants selling impossible things: bottled starlight, laughter sealed in a jar, forgotten lullabies. You browse, enchanted, until you see something impossible—a trinket you recognize. Something from your past that shouldn’t be here.

You approach a vendor, but they only smile. You must trade to uncover secrets.

You make your first deal. A small memory—a childhood fear you no longer need. But the moment the trade is complete, the market starts to change. The stalls seem to move when you aren’t looking. The exits aren’t where you remember. You realize: the market isn’t just a place. It’s alive. And once you’ve started trading, it won’t let you go easily.

Major Twists:

🔮 The market feeds on lost things, and the longer you stay, the more you forget who you were.

⏳ Some of the merchants were once customers,were trapped here forever.

🕰 You learn that you already traded something important—before you even entered.

Ending:

To escape, you must make one final trade: your deepest desire in exchange for your freedom. You step through the exit… but something feels off. You can’t remember what you lost, only that it was important. And as you walk away, you hear a merchant whisper: See you next time.

2. Rehearsal for the Apocalypse

Genres: Sci-Fi | Comedy | Drama | Thriller | Psychological

Themes: Reality vs. fiction, existentialism, performance as survival, paranoia

Plot:

You land your dream role—a hyper-realistic, unscripted film where you must survive an unfolding apocalypse. The director is known for extreme methods, but this is different. The city-sized set is eerily convincing. The disasters feel too real. And once filming starts, the cameras never turn off.

At first, you assume it's method acting. Then, co-stars start disappearing. A crew member whispers a warning before vanishing. You find a discarded script… with your own handwriting in the margins, predicting things before they happen.

Then comes the worst realization: no one ever called “cut.”

Major Twists:

📺 It’s not a film. It’s an experiment designed to test human behavior in a crisis.

🎭 Some actors are in on it. Some aren’t actors at all.

⏳ The real apocalypse already happened—this “set” is the last remnant of civilization.

Ending:

You discover that the cameras are broadcasting to an unseen audience—humanity’s final survivors, watching from a hidden location. You have two choices:

Escape into the wasteland and face the real world.

Stay in the simulation, playing your role forever, never knowing what’s real.

You make your decision. The screen fades to black. But did you choose, or was this just part of the script?

3. The Seventh Rewrite

Genres: Mystery | Fantasy | Time-Loop | Thriller | Romance

Themes: The weight of unfinished stories, destiny vs. authorship, obsession, the power of endings

Plot:

You’re a struggling screenwriter, trapped in a never-ending cycle. Every time you finish your latest script, time resets, and you wake up on the same morning, remembering just enough to know something is wrong.

You try changing the ending. The loop continues.

Then, the story starts bleeding into reality. Strangers seem to recognize you. A love story unfolds, but your partner never remembers you the next day. You find pages of your script hidden in places you don’t remember leaving them. And then, you find a version of the script that isn’t yours—written in your handwriting, but with words you don’t recall writing.

Major Twists:

📜 You are not the writer—you are the story.

🔄 Past versions of you have all failed. You are just the next draft.

🖋 The final rewrite is already written. You just have to find.

Ending:

You finally uncover the perfect ending. But instead of escaping, you realize you were never meant to leave. To exist, the story must go on. You close your laptop… and wake up, once again, on the same morning.

This time, however, the story is different.

part 2!!!

[agentark]

everything we know about Red vs Blue means that there's a canonically supported reality in which every bit of the rvb timeline that happens post-Freelancer saga is actually just simulations Epsilon is running in WASH's head as he unravels

[hrrtshape]

You said that in your vampire dr, he knowledge that they have about the mind, body and universe is beyond what we know. I wonder what they thought about life, afterlife, love, meaning of the universe...

were there some scholars who debated the potentiality of shifting or some other type of altering the consciousness?

Can you share some of their theories/knowledge? if it is not considered sacred in that reality ofc!

so, babylonian philosophy was not like greek philosophy where people sat around arguing for fun. it was deeply tied to religion, astrology, and the gods. but they did have theories about life, the afterlife, love, and the nature of the universe that are way beyond what we assume they knew.

life & meaning of the universe

babylonians saw life as something dictated by the gods but not entirely without human agency. they believed in divine laws/principles that governed existence and that everything, from the motion of the stars to the outcome of a harvest, was written into the fabric of reality. scholars debated fate vs. free will. like, yes, the gods set things in motion, but could a person, through knowledge or ritual, alter their path? the answer was... kind of. there were omens, prayers, offerings that could shift the divine's favour.

afterlife

not glamorous. the afterlife was called the underworld (kur or irkalla), and it was bleak. you did not get rewarded or punished based on morality. you just kind of... existed there, a shadowy version of your former self. the only thing that made your afterlife better was if your descendants made offerings for you. no offerings, you faded. it was less about personal judgment and more about being remembered by the living. but some esoteric sects believed in reincarnation, especially among scholars who studied celestial cycles. they thought some souls could return, though not always in human form.

love

love was not just emotional. it was cosmic. there were texts linking venus (ishtar) to all forms of love, from lust to deep, soul-woven devotion. they had love spells, binding rituals, ways to influence attraction. but they also saw love as unpredictable, dangerous. because ishtar was both the goddess of love and war. desire was divine, but it could destroy you if handled poorly.

consciousness, shifting, altering reality

yes. yes. there were scholars, especially in temple circles, who explored states of consciousness beyond waking reality. they used dream interpretation (oneiromancy) as a legitimate science. dreams were seen as a space between worlds, where divine messages were received and where the soul could travel.

some scholars believed in multiple layers of existence. not quite parallel realities as we understand them, but different levels of perception. through rituals, fasting, or sacred plants (yes, they had psychedelics), they could induce states where they claimed to access hidden knowledge or commune with otherworldly beings. some texts hinted at the idea that reality itself was flexible, that under the right conditions, a person could step outside the script written for them by the gods.

there were also concepts of "double selves." that a person had a physical body and an etemmu (spiritual double) that could detach and travel. this was mostly explored in temple schools, and some accounts suggested that highly trained individuals could intentionally send their etemmu to different places, even different times. shifting, not in the tiktok sense, but something eerily close.

forbidden knowledge......

some things were considered too sacred or dangerous to discuss outside of priestly circles. one thing i learned was that certain astronomical calculations were not just for predicting eclipses. they used them to track cycles of human events, almost like a primitive version of the simulation theory. they believed time was not entirely linear, and that history repeated in patterns dictated by the stars.

[meatincorporated-2]

wait are you ready for me to go insane rvb spoilers ahead

how incredibly upsetting is it that in red vs blue, project freelancer specifically, there is a built in idea and ranking of soldiers based on skill and capability, which then determines the value of their life and whether or not they deserve to live and be told the truth, or to simulate a lie so as to improve the skills of other soldiers? freelancers exist at the top of this foodchain, so when theyre injured its a panic, when they are in trouble or need to improve so much is done. but when a sim trooper is injured it takes months to send a medic, they run out of water and dont have any medical supplies, theyre all horrible soldiers and are constantly ridiculed for it even though they never get a chance to improve. it is only when the freelancers and the sim troopers are put together that we see that they can be just as patehtic as well. one misplaced bullet to the neck. anyone can get brain damage. anyone can die. anyone can not want to be here. is this what temple meant? is this what bro meant?

and the ai are even lower in the foodchain, every ai we see in the show is a tortured abuse soul who doesnt get anywhere near the autonomy that the rest do. alpha was constantly abused, the reason sigma turned to wanting the meta was to complete a broken idea in his head that he knew was once reality. constantly tortured and put through horrible treatment.

then the "dumb" ai. we see it, theyre the lowest. only existing to serve a purpose in this world, only existing to serve. they have feelings too, dont they? filis hated being with the chairman, sheila loved lopez and was distraught when he was taken away, lopez hates working with sarge and the reds, and vic wants to die. they all experience it dont they?

everyone gets sad, everyone gets upset, everyone experiences misery, abandonment, injury, everyone is a person, everyone is a human. even the ai, the things they create, its all human isnt it?

even when its not human

[omegaphilosophia]

The Ontology of Virtual Objects

The rise of digital technology, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence has challenged traditional ontological categories. Virtual objects—whether they are digital avatars, video game items, NFTs, or software simulations—raise fundamental questions about existence, identity, and the nature of reality itself. Are virtual objects "real"? If so, in what way do they exist?

Virtual Objects and Ontological Status

A virtual object is an entity that exists in digital or simulated environments rather than the physical world. Unlike physical objects, virtual objects depend on computational systems to persist.

Materialist View: Virtual objects are not real in the same way that physical objects are because they lack material substance.

Information Ontology: Virtual objects are real but exist as patterns of information rather than as physical matter.

Extended Realism: Some philosophers argue that virtual objects are real within their own ontological domain—just as fictional characters have a kind of "existence" in literature.

Virtual vs. Physical: The Problem of Persistence

Unlike physical objects, which persist independently of human intervention, virtual objects exist only as long as their underlying code and digital infrastructure remain intact. For example, a sword in an online video game ceases to exist if the game's servers shut down. This raises questions about the ontological stability of virtual entities.

Representation and Simulation: What Makes a Virtual Object?

Virtual objects often represent or simulate physical-world objects, but does this mean they are less real? Consider:

A digital painting vs. a physical painting

A virtual table in a 3D-rendered world vs. a physical table

Some argue that virtual objects, while non-physical, can have functional reality—if they fulfill the same role as their real-world counterparts, they exist in a different but meaningful way.

Virtual Objects and Human Experience

Phenomenologically, virtual objects feel real to users. If a virtual house in the Metaverse can be bought, sold, and lived in (digitally), does it not have some degree of "reality"? In this sense, virtual objects exist in relation to human perception and interaction.

Conclusion

The ontology of virtual objects is still evolving, but one thing is clear: digital reality challenges traditional notions of what it means to "exist." Whether we consider them as informational entities, simulated realities, or extensions of human perception, virtual objects demand a reconsideration of ontology in the digital age.

[bestworstcase]

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN it's a draw let's talk about the principles.

In the rulebook for The Lady Afterwards, these are defined as "the most fundamental elements of reality; or, the various natures of the Hours; or, a post-facto invention of scholars of the invisible arts." Mark that third note in particular, because the aspects we discuss herein are—expressly—only an attempt to taxonomize the occult forces at work in the world and thus necessarily an imperfect and imprecise model thereof.

Keep this in mind. There are no clean dividing lines between the principles, and what we label (for example) 'Lantern' and 'Forge' are not, in reality, discrete individual forces but rather a cluster of interacting forces, patterns, rules et cetera which may be expressed or called upon in different ways at different times. Many seeming contradictions or inconsistencies are thus resolved.

With that out of the way:

The interaction most visible to the player is of course the Cultist Simulator 'subversion' mechanic, but I think it is also elucidating to consider 1. differing categorization of certain books shared between Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours, and 2. the principle aspects associated with each of the nine parts of the soul in the latter.

Before we dive into that, a note on 'Secret Histories' and 'Rose':

History is the scar on the world's skin. [Secret Histories describe the unknown complexities of the world, and its many pasts.] vs 'The rose which encompasseth all'. Nine directions to new horizons. [Exploration? Enlightenment? Hope?]

It is evident that Secret Histories and Rose have some relation and may even be synonymous to an extent—for instance, Dr. al-Adim is interested in the former in Cultist Simulator and the latter in Book of Hours—but Secret Histories notably isn't treated like a fully-realized principle in its own right, whereas Rose is mechanically indistinguishable from any other power. What's going on here?

Well, if Rose is the aspect 'which encompasseth all', then we might describe Rose as the skin; and therefore what we call Secret Histories are the scars or the flaws which inform the principle called Rose, in effect making Secret Histories not a principle in its own right, but rather an aspect of Rose.

So for the purpose of this discussion, I will refer only to 'Rose', even with regard to entities and things with Secret Histories aspect in Cultist Simulator. I believe the relation here is comparable to the relation between, for example, Heart and Dances.

Onward!

I have made a series of diagrams. First:

We begin with a wheel representing the order in which the Cultist may subvert lore and influences from one principle to the next, beginning with Lantern at the top and proceeding clockwise; into Forge, into Edge, into Winter, into Heart, into Grail, into Moth, into Lantern. Knock, placed at the wheel's center, cannot be subverted and subverts every other lore except Rose into itself.

Note the larger gap between Moth and Lantern. My reason for arranging the principles this way will become apparent shortly.

For ease of reference, here is a spreadsheet comparing the principles associated with every text that appears in both Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours. In cases where the text's mystery aspect does not match the lore fragment(s) it yields in the first game, I've noted the skill and memory as well.

This is a simple way to demonstrate the 'fuzziness' of the principles, noted at the beginning of this post.

In cases where the principle lore yielded by texts in Cultist Simulator differs from the text's mystery aspect in Book of Hours and the mystery aspect is not one of the newly-introduced aspects, generally speaking, the lessons the Librarian learns will match both; for example, 'The Six Letters on Memory' yields Forge lore in CS, but has Moth as its mystery in BoH, and the Librarian learns a lesson in Transformations & Liberations, a skill whose primary/secondary aspects are Forge and Moth.

The one notable exception is Sunset Passages. In Cultist Simulator, this text yields Winter lore; in Book of Hours, its mystery aspect is Forge, and it provides a lesson in Sacra Solis Invicti (Lantern/Sky). In order to understand the re-categorization of this text, we must consider its subject matter: it is a "miscellany of the funerary prayers, ceremonies, and hymns of the Church of the Unconquered Sun," which "schismed during the Intercalate, when the Sun was divided." It is thus concerned primarily with pre-Intercalate worship of the Madrugad, whose aspects are Winter and Forge, and the skill the Librarian learns from it pertains to those rituals.

Sunset Passages thus serves as a useful illustration of how and why certain texts may be categorized differently between the two games. It is not arbitrary. It's a mechanical representation of the taxonomic 'fuzziness' in that the Cultist can read a certain book and conclude that it's a volume of Winter lore whereas the Librarian can read the same book and categorize it as a book of mainly Forge lore with some relevance to Lantern and Sky, and both are correct, although the Librarian, being a scholar rather than an adept, takes a more nuanced view.

The point being that we can look at those texts which have been reassigned to one of the four/five aspects introduced in Book of Hours as a rough approximation of common relations between those aspects and the ones in the earlier game.

We'll use Moon as an example.

Kanishk at the Spider's Door — Edge lore -> Moon mystery — Lesson is Sharps (Edge/Moon) — Memory is A Stolen Secret (Moon/Knock)

Larquebine Codex — Heart lore -> Moon Mystery — Lesson is Sea Stories (Moon/Grail) — Memory is Gossip (Rose/Grail)

Morphy Codex — SH lore -> Moon mystery — Lesson is Tridesma Hiera (Moon/Grail) — Memory is Beguiling Melody (Grail/Sky)

Viennese Conundra — Moth lore -> Moon mystery — Lesson is Wolf Stories (Moon/Scale) — Memory is Fear (Scale/Edge)

Voyages of Ferninshun of Oreol — SH lore -> Moon mystery — Lesson is Sea Stories (Moon/Grail) — Memory is Salt (Knock/Moon/Winter)

Tally up the aspects associated with these texts: Grail: 5, Edge: 3, Rose: 3, Knock: 2, Scale: 2, 1 each Sky, Moth, Winter, Heart.

& secondary aspects for skills with primary Moon aspect: Grail: 2, Scale: 2, Edge: 1, Heart: 1

& primary aspects for skills with secondary Moon aspect: Winter: 5, Rose: 2, Edge: 2, 1 each Grail, Heart, Nectar, Sky, Scale.

& other aspects on Moon-aspected memories: 4 each Rose, Edge, Winter, Knock, 1 each Sky, Moth.

Keep in mind that this is only an approximation, because we're not taking into account any context for when, why, or how these conjunctions may occur. But we can identify certain patterns just by looking at the frequency; the two most common conjunctions are with Edge and Winter (10x), followed by Rose (9x), Grail (7x), Knock (6x), Scale (5x), Heart and Sky (3x), Moth (2x), and Nectar (1x).

Rose and Knock are both unusual in how they interact with other principles, with Rose being all-encompassing and Knock all-opening. So we're somewhat less interested in them for now. If we consider only the frequency of Moon's associations with the seven 'regular' principles present in Cultist Simulator, where might we position Moon in relation to the subversion wheel diagrammed above?

Well, the most intuitive way to decide its placement is to first put it in between Edge and Winter, then move it a bit clockwise to reflect its significant overlap with Grail and minor associations with Heart and Moth. Right?

In the interest of brevity I won't go through the tallies for the other three 'regular' aspects introduced in Book of Hours, but after going through this same process (and making some aesthetic adjustments, because this is only an approximate representation)...

What we have here is the Cultist Simulator order-of-subversion wheel with the four new aspects plotted onto it as the corners of a containing square; Sky in the juncture between Moth and Lantern, Scale between Lantern and Edge, Moon between Edge and Heart, and Nectar between Heart and Moth. I propose that:

These four principles subvert each other clockwise around the outer wheel, Sky into Scale into Moon into Nectar into Sky, and

The principles in Cultist Simulator, including Knock and Rose, all emerged through division of these older four during the striving and conflicts of the Lithomachy.

Any serious discussion of the Lithomachy is well out of the scope of this post (BUT WE'LL GET TO IT SOONER OR LATER BECAUSE HOO BOY) so my argumentation on this second point will necessarily be rather thin. Sorry. The remainder of this post will concern how well the above diagram holds up to more substantive investigation, and to that end here are the definitions of each principle aspect as per Book of Hours, in order of subversion:

Rose. 'The rose which encompasseth all'. Nine directions to new horizons.[Exploration? Enlightenment? Hope?]

Sky. Wind, storm, echo, song; the intricacies of mathematics and the principles of flight. Law's touch is lighter than we sometimes think.[Matters of balance, harmony and necessity.]

Scale. Hard without, hard within, hard to rouse, harder to subdue. [What is left of the crude powers of the deep earth.]

Moon. Secrets are soft; night is softer still; the sea speaks. It is not always wise to listen. [The nocturnal, the forgotten.]

Nectar. The green wealth in the world's veins; the pulse of the seasons. [Long ago, some called this principle Blood.]

Lantern. 'Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.' - Thomas Browne [Lantern is the principle of the secret place sometimes called the House of the Sun, and of the light above it.]

Forge. 'Fire', I once read, 'is the winter that warms and the spring that consumes.' [The principle of the Forge transforms and destroys.]

Edge. All conquest occurs at the Edge. One who dwells there is blind, and cannot be wounded. Another is strong, and grows stronger. [Edge is the principle of battle and of struggle.]

Winter. ... [Winter is the principle of silence, of endings, and of those things that are not quite dead.]

Heart. The Heart Relentless beats to protect the skin of the world we understand. [The Heart is the principle that continues and preserves.]

Grail. Hunger, lust, the drowning waters. [The principle of the Grail honours both the birth and the feast.]

Moth. I knew a man who captured moths in a bell-jar. On nights like this, he would release them one by one to die in the candle. [Moth is the wild and perilous principle of chaos and yearning.]

& Knock. The Knock permits no seal and no isolation. It thrusts us gleefully out of the safety of ignorance. [The Knock is the principle that opens doors and unseams barriers.]

And while, as I said, we are not going to delve deeply into the subject of the Lithomachy in this post, I do want to make a brief note of the gods-from-stone and their probable aspects. The Horned-Axe, we know to be both Knock- [Liminal Evocation] and Winter-aspected [Winter veneration]. Her attestation in 'On the Winding Stair' is also quite interesting:

Gregory evidently succeeds in opening a way to something he calls the 'Moon-Hall', but here his account becomes erratic. He insists that in the Moon-Hall the Horned-Axe is still an Edge-power; he hopes for an 'eternal rival', but cannot find the one he needs. The narrative is increasingly interspersed with chess notations, and ends abruptly.

Here we have an implication that the Horned-Axe was and is no longer an Edge-power, but within the House of the Moon she still is Edge-aspected (or possibly a cross-gender mirror-twin of hers retains an Edge-aspect that she has lost or discarded). The similarity here to the recurring idea that the Wheel still turns in the House of the Moon is striking. Her altar beneath Hush House accepts Edge, Scale, Winter, and Knock aspect.

The Horned-Axe is one of the three Hours of the Chancel alongside the Meniscate and the Sister-and-Witch, of whom the former has obvious associations with the Moon and the latter with the Sea. I submit, then, that before the Lithomachy, the Horned-Axe's aspects were instead Moon and Scale, and that she was—in some way—divided or bifurcated in the course of the Lithomachy into two halves, both with Knock aspect, one Winter-aspected and the other an Edge-aspected reflection.

(<- I will note, as an observation, that there is a vague and rather tangential precedent for such an occurrence; the Wolf-Divided is the product of the division of an Hour, and likewise has Edge and Winter aspect. The common factor would seem to be the coincidence of an ending, hence Winter, with the emergence of an entity driven by an unfulfilled need, hence Edge.)

That is our only living god-from-stone. The others are the Wheel, the Flint, the Tide, the Seven-Coil, and the Egg Unhatching. We know that the Wheel was usurped by the Moth (and that its blood, shed on the roots of the Wood, birthed the Velvet); that the Flint was shattered by the Forge; that the Colonel and the Mother of Ants conspired to slay the Coil; and that the Egg Unhatching fled to the Glory by unknown means and with uncertain outcome.*

[*The Unwise Mortal brought it through the Tricuspid Gate and then it hatched into the Sun-in-Splendour. This is how he ascended to Hourhood as the Watchman. I can't get into it right now or we'll be here all day but: TRUST.]

So, the Wheel was replaced by the Moth and the Velvet (aspects: Moth, Heart—& I submit, also Moon). When the Medium paints the endless memory: "With each turn its cilia pulse and wriggle and its body flushes translucent to crimson. It might be ugly but it is beautiful like the withdrawing of blood from the labyrinths of glass. It does not cease and all its involutions are infinite." All of this locates us firmly in the neighborhood of Moth/Heart, emphasis on Heart given the imagery, and given that the aspect now called Nectar was once known as Blood, this one is easy.

The Wheel's first aspect was Blood. I believe it may also have been Scale-aspected, due to its association with serpents. (On this see Serpents & Venoms. Note that the Secret Histories wiki identifies the 'low red sun' as the Egg Unhatching mostly on the basis of the Medium's glorious memory, but this plainly incorrect. The 'low red sun' was the Wheel, and the Egg Unhatching was a moon, before it hatched. We'll talk about this in more detail in my next post.)

The Flint was 'eclipsed and then shattered' by the Forge. In nearly all of its attestations it's associated with the earth in some way. When painting the golden memory, the Flint is described thus: "This is only a stone, though it is smoothed and sharpened to a midnight point, but look closer. Each of its facets shows a single point of light. It might be the glint of firelight. It might be each a different Star."

As with the Wheel being a Blood-Hour, it seems quite straightforward that the Flint's aspect was Scale; and given its connection to the Wheel through the line of Antaios, an argument could be made that it had a minor Blood aspect as well, making the Wheel and the Flint reflections of each other (Blood/Scale | Scale/Blood).

Next, the Tide, which the Red Grail drowned and consumed. Its usurpation by the Grail and association with the Sea would suggest Blood (the primordial precursor to Grail) and, obviously, Moon. Painting the luxurious memory offers the description: "In a night-blue Mansus-haze swims a coral palace-crown. At its fore-edge it absorbs the lesser Names, coating them with its minerals and juices, and at its rear edge it expels some of them, polished like jewels. The others go to feed its thorny Tide-heart," which reinforces the 'Grail-precursor' angle pretty strongly.

Further, the Tide being Moon- and Blood-aspected offers an elegant explanation for the unusual frequency of Moon-Grail conjunctions in comparison to the other 'precursor' aspects (Heart-Sky is also a common conjunction but otherwise conjunctions with aspects outside the precursor 'quadrant' are quite rare); consider the Sea as the world's blood, an ever-churning life-giving liquid, and the Moon must figure as the world's heart, as the engine of the tidal forces which keep the waters circulating. Heart is the connection between the two, but Grail having supplanted Blood (now Nectar) as the principle most strongly associated with the Sea, it remains closely entangled with the Moon.

Like the Flint, it seems fairly straightforward that the Seven-Coil was Scale-aspected: its monstrous serpentine form and present associations with earthquakes both unambiguously point in this direction. Contra the Secret Histories wiki, I actually do not believe that the Seven-Coil had Rose aspect itself. The events leading up to its slaying are (notably) recounted in much greater detail than the death of any other god-from-stone, and unlike the others, its defeat came not at the hands of a god-from-blood but what seem to have been the first two human* gods-from-flesh; it follows that the death of the Seven-Coil occurred much later than the usurpation of the Wheel, the Flint, and the Tide...

[*I believe the Elegiast and the Beachcomber may be much older, but neither of them were mortal humans as the Colonel and the Mother of Ants seem to have been prior to their ascensions. Jury is out on when the Vagabond ascended to Hourhood exactly, but she's of the Cross. Probably.]

...and indeed, 'The Deeds of the Scarred Captain' places the slaying of the Seven-Coil immediately prior to the founding of Mycenae, which occurred around 1350-1200 BC—well into the Bronze Age and not remotely prehistorical.

The Coil itself wasn't Rose-aspected; I believe its slaying is the inciting incident for one of the Histories—most likely the Third. The massive proliferation of Worms in that History, the loose association between Worms and the Coil, the origin of the Seven-Coils' Temple in the Third History, Sparrow's paranoid conviction that this History is "overrun by Coils," and even the aspects of the Third History's encaustum Nillycant (Winter & Edge for the Colonel; Scale for the Coil) all seem to point in this direction.

That leaves only the Egg Unhatching, vexing little enigma that it is. In the Medium's painting it appears like this: "A faded pale white-gold seen in certain patches of the sky, when the mist is clearing but the sun might be mistaken for the moon. We hold our breath and watch it brighten, until each colour divides from the next like a new-minted alphabet." Despite its having been a moon, I'm not wholly convinced that it had Moon aspect; that it hatched into the Sun-in-Splendour (you'll have to trust me on this for now) might suggest it was Sky-aspected, although this doesn't feel quite right to me either.

The other Lantern-precursor it could have had is Scale, and I am fairly confident that the Egg Unhatching was Scale-aspected. The Seven-Coil is described as 'the nest' in a certain ending and there are some hints toward a connection between the Sun-in-Splendour and the Scīmafectra-kind of the Carapace Cross; it would not be unreasonable for the Egg Unhatching to have been laid or incubated in the Nest—that is, the Seven-Coil—during the era of the Carapace Cross, and thus to have Scale aspect. The Scale determination may loosely support this as well. Furthermore, the Unwise Mortal "learnt the shaping arts of the Flint" and later "ascended to the shadow of the Egg Unhatching," which is suggestive of some degree of similarity between the Flint and the Egg. So we'll put this one down as Scale and a 'maybe' on Moon/Sky.

...and that's my 'brief' note on the probable aspects of the gods-from-stone. TO RECAP:

Horned-Axe: Moon/Scale -> Knock/Winter + Knock/Edge

Wheel: Blood/Scale

Flint: Scale/Blood

Tide: Blood/Moon

Seven-Coil: Scale

Egg Unhatching: Scale + Moon/Sky (?)

Lastly—and this is more a footnote for a future post, really—notice the absence here of any gods-from-stone with clear, unambiguous signs of having been Sky-aspected. An argument can be made for the Wheel and the Flint to have had Sky aspect, the Wheel having been the old sun and the Flint being associated with starlight, but there is little in the way of supporting evidence (and neither Sky-Nectar nor Sky-Scale are common conjunctions, although Heart and Sky are frequently conjunct in matters of weather, so the argument for the Wheel to have been Blood / Scale / Sky is a bit stronger than the one for the Flint).

Right. So.

Let's talk about the nine elements of the soul.

Here, I've marked how different aspects are connected through, or by, each part of the soul. Where two aspects are not adjacent, the connection is represented passing through the simplest juncture, such that the aspects of Ereb, Wist, and Trist connect to each other through Knock; the Moth and Rose of Fet pass through Sky; and Moon is the joint between Health's Nectar/Heart and Scale.

Depicting the elements this way reveals some interesting patterns:

Other than Health, which is unusual in other ways, every non-adjacent pair here is joined through its juncture at a 135° angle (and if we were to route the connection from Heart to Scale through Knock rather than Moon, this would be true of Health too; however, I believe that Moon is the more appropriate juncture in this case for reasons I will outline in a bit.)

The two paired aspects that are adjacent around the inner wheel, Forge/Edge Mettle and Heart/Grail Chor, are stronger in the principle subverted when these aspects interact. In theory, this suggests that Sky may subvert Lantern—and this in turn would be a small point in favor of interpreting Sky / Scale / Moon / Nectar as precursor aspects whose division created the modern principles, on the grounds that Sky subverting Lantern then obeys the Sanguine Exception.

(which holds that every door must open both ways.)

Chor, "exuberance, rhythm, and instinct," has Heart aspect with a lesser power of Grail; when subverting Heart lore or influence into Grail, the project description is "what does not cease will succumb, at last, to temptation," and the action "all that moves must succumb to hunger." This conjunction is also reversed in Memory: Satisfaction, which has Grail aspect with a lesser power of Heart, so it doesn't seem like a stretch to conclude that Chor arises from hunger in moderation; that is, the need for sustenance and meaning in life, absent the wilder hedonism of Grail.

Chor's malady, Duendracy, is a lapse in concentration brought on by what is described as a quite pleasant but very distracting (or perhaps inspiring) "possessing presence from the Mansus." It has Heart aspect only; but notice how afflicted Chor seems to be stilled as the Grail aspect is lost to the pleasant distraction—even though Heart is defined as the principle of relentless motion! Similarly, that Duentratic Chor must be roused by a sufficient power of Moth, the "wild and perilous principle of yearning," suggests the best cure for Duendracy is a nameless dissatisfaction which reawakens the Heart to its hunger, and thus restores its balance with Grail.

Ereb is "pride, compassion, hatred, fear" and "the shadow in the soul's cellar." It has Grail aspect with a lesser amount of Edge; so, we might call it an expression of passionate desire bringing about, or brought about by, strife. And while Ereb itself lacks Knock aspect, the way its Grail-Edge conjunction is expressed does resonate with the principle of Knock for much the same reason that one facet of Knock is wounding.

What commonality unites the qualities of pride, compassion, hatred, fear?—here I will note that Book of Hours (and Cultist Simulator, in less unsubtle ways) incorporates a number of Jungian concepts into its storytelling; the Archaeologist in particular is more or less explicitly tormented by their projected Shadow, in Jungian terms. The Shadow is an unconscious aspect of the personality composed of traits that are unwanted, that do not align with the aspirational ideal image of oneself, and which are therefore both repressed and projected outward, driving conflict both within and without. Confrontation with the Shadow is inevitable and may lead to either possession by it (which produces confusion, distress, emotional paralysis) or assimilation of it (which acknowledges and integrates the Shadow into the conscious self, a spiritual awakening).

The word Ereb derives from ἔρεβος (érebos), the ancient Greek for the darkness of Hades; and it's "the shadow in the soul's cellar," the intersection of Grail's "drowning waters" with the conflict and conquests of Edge—it is the Shadow, and so it is hidden or buried but must, sooner or later, be encountered. And so we might say that the Shadow will eventually, inevitably, perhaps violently, Knock. Note, also, the descriptions when strengthening Ereb with either Bosk ("the Wood is filled with shadows") or Skolekosophy ("...will unchain my Ereb"), and more generally Ereb's association with the unwritten, instinctual lore of the primaeval wood and the study of things that should not be studied. The Shadow comes Knocking, etc.

(I find Ereb especially interesting in relation to both Calyptra and the Corrivality, and will get into a deeper dive about this at some point in the future. For now: Westengryre is the affliction incurred by provoking the Mare-in-the-Tree. Sleep softly!).

Fet is "that part of us which walks in dreams," and its first aspect is Rose, its second Moth; and, as noted, I propose that the juncture in this conjunction is Sky. Why?

Sky concerns "matters of balance, harmony, and necessity." Moth is an unpredictable, wandering principle of chaotic yearning; Rose is "exploration, enlightenment, hope." Now think about Fascination: 2 Moth, THE HIGHER I RISE THE MORE I SEE; and if the Cultist succumbs to visions with three Fascination, this is their ending: "First it was the dreams. Then it was the visions. Now it's everything. I no longer have any idea what is real, and what is not."

Fet, the part which walks in dreams, which traverses the Mansus, has Moth aspect commingled with the aspect of enlightenment and exploration. Its malady is Gisting, the Rose aspect absent the Moth, and described thus: "As my concentration fails, a part of my soul flutters away, drawn by a distant half-imaginary light. [...] My fet is gisting - too loosely tethered to me - so that I glimpse the Mansus even in daylight hours. [...] In dreams I have visited the House behind the world... and some part of me is trapped there now, even when I wake." Whence does the Cultist's Moth-aspected Fascination derive? From the unmooring of Moth from their Fet.

To maintain one's Fet in good health—to walk the Mansus in dreams with the dangerous impulse to wander tethered safely to the skin of the world and the ways beneath it—what is required most of all is balance; harmony between the peril of Moth and the Rose which anchors the dreamer to the Wake. This is a matter of Sky.

(& of course, Rose and Moth together represent the nine divisions of the wind itself: the eight winds of the compass rose and the directionless, chaotic ninth.)

Health—Health is unusual in several ways, the most obvious being that it has three aspects rather than two. It is not a part of the soul per se but rather the dwelling-place thereof; its aspects are Nectar, Heart, and Scale. I believe that the reason for this is relatively simple. The aspect now called Nectar was once instead named Blood, and so we might consider that the first aspect of Health, the body, is the Heart-Blood, or the Blood-in-the-Heart. Or we might conceptualize this combination of Nectar-Heart as within-without, the lifeblood moved by the heart beating to protect the skin.

Then why Scale?

Well... Scale is the aspect of what is left, of what remains, of the old forgotten songs asleep in the depths of the earth which might yet be roused; and the Cross died not but passed within. Health has Scale-aspect because that is the last trace of the Carapace Cross, long-buried and forgotten but never quite gone. Hence my choice to route Nectar-Heart's union to Scale through Moon, the secret and forgotten things, rather than through Knock and Forge. Either is cogent, but I think Moon is the better fit.

Next! Mettle. Mettle is easy. Mettle is the "will; self-discipline; that part of us which makes the right choice" and "the capacity for meaningful choice," and it has Forge aspect with a lesser power of Edge. When subverting Forge lore or influence into Edge, the Cultist invokes the Lionsmith's rebellion at Issus: "The Hour called Lionsmith shattered his own sword to escape his master's dominion. All things can be overcome, with sufficient force. [...] I've shattered what I believed before. Thus have I subverted my Forge lore to Edge."

A small—but important!—detail I want to underscore here. In shattering his sword at Issus, the Lionsmith enacted a teaching of the Forge of days, that "the artisan may achieve their highest goal only by destroying their most precious tool." That is to say, the method used here to subvert Forge into Edge is not to conquer the Forge with the Edge but instead to reforge the Edge using Forge-techniques. One principle subverting another doesn't necessarily imply an adversarial relationship to each other; they are instead complements, or united opposites, or both. Forge-into-Edge is the clearest demonstration of this.

Thus, Mettle encompasses not just fortitude and conviction but specifically the will to change oneself—to break and be reforged—in pursuit of the highest goal. I would also submit that it is the part of the soul most in conflict with Ereb (the ego-ideal of the superego, if you want it in Jungian terms; that aspirational sense of self and identity which suppresses the Shadow). The drowning waters of Grail versus the consuming fire of Forge, the birth-and-death, end-and-beginning of Grail vs the metamorphosis and shaping arts of Forge; opposite and the same, passion striving against self-discipline, willpower striving to give form to unconscious desire, and so conflict arises from the Edge between them.

Phost is "the light within: sight, perception, inspiration" and "all the Glory's gifts." Its first aspect is Lantern, its second Sky. When afflicted, its malady is Fascinated: "My inner light gutters, then flares - I am snared in a dangerous fascination. [...] Phost is the brightest part of the soul - sometimes it can grow too bright for safety." Unlike the Cultist's Moth-y Fascination, Fascinated Phost has a small degree of Lantern aspect. It does, however, appear to be the same condition, hence "the HIGHER I RISE the MORE I SEE."

The discrepant aspect here may come down to a simple difference in temperament between the Cultist and the Librarian; one imagines that an adept must have a greater inclination toward Moth than a scholar—otherwise why seek what lies above and beyond the Stag Door? Thus Glory entices the adept but blinds the scholar. Or else, for the scholar, the danger of Fascination lies in what perilous yearnings might be enticed toward you, as Daymare insinuates, although whether the advice she offers Gwen is applicable generally or not is, given Gwen's particular circumstances, unclear.

In any case, Phost is the part of the soul afflicted by Fascination, and it seems reasonable to conceive of it as a counterpart or perhaps the fulcrum of Fet. Consider the Watchman's Paradoxes, a Lantern-Sky skill which can be committed either to Illumination or Nyctodromy:

From Light (Phost) Our dreams are shadows cast by the Watchman's light. So we perceive him even in our shadow. This is Illumination. From Change (Fet) We recognise the dream-places that the Watchman shows us, though we have never seen them before. Perhaps we were something else when we saw them. This paradox is fundamental to Nyctodromy.

If a dream is the shadow cast by the Watchman's light, or a place thereby illuminated, and Phost is "all the Glory's gifts," and the Fet is the part of the soul which walks in dreams, then it is—perhaps—Phost which illuminates the way, as an inner semblance of the Watchman's light, and keeps the balance between Rose and Moth.

Shapt is "eloquence and understanding; the door opens both ways." It has Knock aspect and a lesser power of Forge. It is words. It is speech: the first wound, the first sword, the first key. When afflicted, it develops the malady Acusis, "in which the door, Shapt, cannot be closed. [...] Every sound rings like a bell - every word scratches at my eyes or skin." Knock, absent Forge, soothed only by the silence of Winter. I get very excitable about Shapt and this is already a quite long post, so I will leave it at: Ebrehel is the Shapt of an Hour.

Trist is "the change and the longing," and its first aspect is Moth, its second Moon. Its affliction, Despairing, has Edge aspect instead: "Trist is already half a hand trailed in a river of deeper sadness. [...] Melancholy is the mist on the soul's waters. Despair is the wolf that prowls the water's edge." Trist is also implicated in the existence of what seems to be the most dangerous of the 'great shadows' that can be found in tombs—as described in 'The Barrowchild's Elegies':

The Barrowchild warns particularly of the 'avidity of trist', where a remnant-shadow's longing for change survives its sense of self and even devours its wist. That longing may draw the curious into the tomb, where the remnant-shadow changes so that it cannot be distinguished from its visitor - or that the reverse becomes true - and that it is never again possible to say whether it is the shadow or the visitor that exits the tomb.

ahem. Conceptually what this 'avidity of trist' describes is, in Jungian terms, possession by the Shadow. In Secret Histories terms, I believe that Ereb (fear) overtakes Trist, which turns to despair; the Mettle (will, choice, the determinants of self) is eroded or forsaken or otherwise lost, whereafter the despairing Trist provokes a complete obliteration of everything else that remains in a violent, agonized desperation to destroy the Ereb. & that's what a Wolf-Splinter is.

So the Moth aspect needs no explanation. Moon, however, is interesting, as is the juncture through Knock and Winter. Trist, the change and the longing, is melancholy... and Moon is the aspect of secrets, of nocturnal and forgotten things. Trist, I believe, is specifically the longing for what has been lost, after the changing, after something ends. Hence the danger of its avidity.

Last and not least, we have Wist; "the soul's memory, the true name scratched on its cornerstone, what remains after the rest has passed." It's the memory and the remnants. Its aspects are Winter and Lantern, and its malady, Shell-Crossed, has the aspect Scale, expressly because it's a surfacing remnant: "Memory crossed, hatched, lined, snapped. My thoughts are tangled and unfamiliar to me. Something of those who came before - the Carapace Cross - has always lingered in humankind. It's risen now in me."

The Winter-aspect is of course straightforward, given the Wist's role as memory-keeper for the soul. The Elegiast comes to mind, as does the nowhere-Hour called Snow (for death alters; Snow endures).

But why Lantern? Lantern is not an aspect frequently associated with preservation or endurance—quite the opposite, it purifies and it blinds. It begins to make sense if we consider this Lantern-aspect in relation to the Scale-aspect that emerges when Wist becomes Shell-Crossed, and that is, I think, the closest we have to a smoking gun in terms of Scale being a precursor to Lantern. What remains of the Carapace Cross now? Only light. This is why Shell-Crossed Wist is cured with Lantern; its Scale aspect is purified and therefore forgotten, all but the very last, inextinguishable trace.

(We'll discuss that more in another post.)

So!

All of these conjunctions of principles within the soul track quite well with the positioning of Sky / Scale / Moon / Nectar at the corners around the 'inner wheel.' I think the elements of the soul provide a more comprehensive look at the way the principles interact with each other than do Cultist Simulator's subversion projects, which we turn to now. Briefly. (she says, lying.)

Lantern into Forge: "The magus Julian Coseley claims the Forge of Days split the Sun. Perhaps he was right. [...] Light yields to Heat."

Something interesting to note is that there is a recurring if rather subtle motif of the Sun's light—the light of the Glory, Lantern—being cold. Or at least, not very warm. Besides the Meniscate, whose light is that of a reflection because her domain is the Moon, all of the extant Solar Hours have Winter aspect, which is not particularly unusual in and of itself given the influence of the Intercalate. But the Medium's splendid memory implies that the Sun-in-Splendour, although brighter than the Madrugad or the Sun-in-Rags, was likewise chilly: "The Sun was brighter once - no warmer, but its light held colours we no longer see."

This contrasts the Wheel, as described in, for example, the Inks of Revelation commitment to Hushery: "...since the dawn times when the sun hung red and low and we felt its warmth like autumn." But even that suggests only a little warmth.

Lantern and Forge are similar in myriad ways—light purifies, light blinds; fire gives light and consumes knowledge; one is unmerciful, the other inspires unmerciful change—but one key enduring difference does seem to be that Lantern-light is cold, unyielding, whereas Forge-light burns, desires, consumes, destroys. In this specific way Forge holds more similarity to Moth and Grail than it does to Lantern... and indeed we do see Forge-Moth or Forge-Grail conjunctions here and there. Notably, Transformations & Liberations (Forge-Moth) and Numen: A Merciless Alteration (Edge-Forge-Grail).

Forge into Edge, we've touched on already.

Edge into Winter: "I am acknowledging the victory of patience over strength. [...] Patience defeats strength."

Just as the method for subverting Forge into Edge recalls the Lionsmith, Edge into Winter may—arguably—call upon the Colonel's understanding of victory through the cunning borne of experience. Or we might interpret the operation from the perspective that even the fiercest conflict must end in time, whether in victory or defeat; that even the strongest warrior must fall. The White waits west of the world, but she will not wait forever. In all likelihood both are true, or at least can be true. I would imagine there are different techniques drawn from either viewpoint. (& this, too, is Edge.)

Winter into Heart: "Winter's coming must yield at last to spring."

This operation, I find most interesting in conjunction with the description of Forge as "the winter that warms and the spring that consumes." On its face, it is reasonable to interpret Winter and Heart as opposite forces—silence and stillness, striving against the drums and motion of life—but... but. Winter is the principle of endings, of silence, and of those things that are not quite dead.

Consider the Winter-Heart skill Quenchings & Quellings:

Arts which quench fires and bring solace to the troubled mind. 'A true adept is never troubled by fire, nor by fever, nor by restless spirit'. – Ambrose Westcott Safety in Silence (Trist) Unwise words are dangerous. Mourn them, remember them, speak them not. This is Hushery. Safety in Oblivion (Health) Let the flesh forget disease, let the smoke forget the flame, let the troubled mind forget its pain: Preservation.

Ambrose Westcott was a metallurgist, an alchemist, a pyrographer—his area of specialization pertained to Forge, not to Heart or Winter. But Quenchings & Quellings is first and foremost a skill interested in regret and forgetting, and therein lies the connection: Regret is a Winter-Forge memory. "Every choice has its shadow."

I do not think Winter and Heart are opposing forces at all, but rather two sides of a three-sided coin. (If you'll pardon the tortured metaphor.) Winter ends and Heart renews. Winter remembers and Heart preserves. What's missing from these pictures? Forge, which destroys; Forge, which transforms. Not for nothing are these the principles of Calyptra; the Black Flower's Heart-aspect, the White's Winter-aspect, the Red's Forge.

Heart into Grail, we've already discussed.

Grail into Moth: "Even the Red Grail falls prey to the buzzing in the brain."

Obviously, little daylight exists between hunger and yearning; both are a form of desire. Moth and Grail are similar in their hedonism, their wildness, their violence; the Moth flayed the Wheel and the Thunderskin was flayed at the Grail's behest. (Much is made of the confounding question of whether the Moth or the Grail came first, feasted first, arose first. There are no end of contradictory answers, but the truth is really very simple. They are twins—triplets actually but we don't have time for that—born together.)

But do note the specific phrasing used here—that the Red Grail falls prey to the Moth. The Hour called Moth is a hunter. This is described, for example, when committing Horns & Ivories to the Bosk. So the Red Grail is an Hour which hungers and consumes, presiding at births and deaths in equal measure, and sometimes she falls prey to the hunter-Moth; there is some notion here of reversals, of the hunter-becoming-hunted, of hunger being what is preyed upon.

Here I will draw your attention to the Moth-Grail skill Resurgences & Emergences: "Birth and death are only directions. Between the two we find a crossroads." When Grail is subverted into Moth, this is the crossroads they approach.

& into Knock: "Place pressure upon a weakness, and rend the skin of the world." Any aspect studied with Knock becomes Knock.

Knock is a power of opening, of wounding, of breaching; but I think it is also—perhaps even more importantly—a principle of intersection. It is the joining-together which dissolves all boundaries. The reason it subverts everything is less that it's a cosmic skeleton key and more a question of Knock being the principle that understands everything to be connected to everything else, because it is the principle which connects all things. Nothing is truly separate, and nothing can be divided unless it was first joined.

It's the aspect of the Mother of Ants, who encircles, who arises from wounds, who spares those who are already harmed. Knock is the principle that both wounds and heals by wounding, the venom that is also the antivenin. If you've ever wondered why Sacrament Ascite is brewed from Glassfinger Toxin, this is why.

Now—finally—let's discuss my proposed operations of Sky into Scale, into Moon, into Nectar, back into Sky.

Sky into Scale: This one is actually quite open-and-shut. We'll start with the Ithastry commitment for the language Kernewek Henevek:

The Stars (Wist) A smiths' proverb in Brancrug: 'What starts in the sky, ends in the earth.' A story goes with it, that the village smith's anvil in the time of the Dewulfs was hatched from a meteor stone, and so every plough in the village knows something of the stars. Not many remember the story, but everyone remembers the proverb. It would probably count as Ithastry.

From the sky to the earth; as above, so below. Sky is "wind, storm, echo, song... matters of balance, harmony, and necessity." Scale is "hard without, hard within, hard to rouse, harder to subdue; what remains of the old powers of the earth." What's an earthquake if not a storm within the stone? Or is it a song that still echoes beneath the earth?

Both are precursors to the modern principle of Lantern; Scale, the principle of the Flint, is very closely associated with Forge—and in Lightning we find the conjunction of Sky-Forge.

There is also a whole tangent we could go into here about the birds and the serpents and the birds-of-a-scale, worms-of-a-feather. But I won't belabor the point. Next!

Scale into Moon: One could make an argument, too, for Scale into Nectar, on the grounds of stone-and-soil, fossil-and-seed, antecedent for the Winter-Heart relationship. However, that becomes more difficult when the relationships between the precursors and the modern principles is taken into account, and I think the similarities between Scale-Nectar and Winter-Heart are more accurately represented in terms of Scale-Moon-Nectar preceding the triad of Forge-Winter-Heart.

The Scale-Moon subversion also has Hill & Hollow going for it, in particular the Preservation commitment:

The ways of the hill-children and the gods-from-stone. Old paths, old secrets, the songs that still echo beneath the earth. How They Endured (Health) In the beginning, the Carapace Cross served the first Hours, the gods born from stone. When the gods-from-stone were defeated, where could the Cross go? Into the hills; into the Bounds; and into us. This is how humankind came to be, and in our most secret hollows, the Cross endures. This is a matter of Preservation.

(Note that 'the Bounds' seems to also encompass the House of the Moon, as per the Nyctodromy commitment for Hyksos.)

Scale is what sleeps, remains, what might be roused, while Moon is what is secret, what is hidden, what is nocturnal, and what has been forgotten. Scale endures and fades from memory; Moon remembers what was forgotten. The old songs that echo under the earth become the secrets whispered by the waves beneath the moon.

Like Forge and Winter, Scale and Moon pair the violent destruction of Scale (as a shattering earthquake) with the softer, gentle endings presided over by Moon (as the sea erodes stone). Next!

Moon to Nectar: Here, of course, the dual nature of Grail—the drowning waters but also blood—is worth noting. Both Nectar and Moon are far more strongly tied to Grail than to Heart. And of course, the Wheel, the low red sun, once had the aspect Blood; and it still turns inside the House of the Moon.

Speaking of the Wheel, while Serpents & Venoms is a Scale-Moon skill, it undeniably concerns the Wheel (which may, as we discussed earlier, have also been Scale-aspected), and its Hushery commitment has some interesting implications regarding the relationship between the Wheel and dreams:

The Last Sun (Trist) In the dawn times the sun was lower, so we gave it our blood. From our blood it knew us, and so it was kinder. Its serpents brought us its poisons to drink, and so we died. But we only died a little, and so we dreamed, and returned the next day to give it our blood again. Those times of peace persist in the lessons of Hushery.

In the Mansus as it exists now, dreams are shadows cast by the Watchman's light, or else illuminated by his light, but of course this could not have been true in the dawn time when the Watchman didn't yet exist. The Moon-Knock memory A Stolen Secret, "Something I overheard in dreams?", together with Moon's associations with secrets and nocturnal things, at least circumstantially supports the conclusion that dawn-dreams were illuminated instead by the Moon.

Thus, this interplay between the blood-drinking Wheel whose serpents opened the way each night into dreams beneath the light of the Moon, speaks to the interaction of Moon with the old principle Blood, and what traces of that remain between Moon and Nectar.

Blood drinks of life and gives death and the Moon heals in dreams; Blood brings the dawn and Night yields to day. Nectar is the principle of germination and of poisoned thorns and of renewal, and the Moon still remembers what it was.

Also, the Velvet. Just... the Velvet. Next!

Nectar to Sky: We return to Kernawek Henavek, but this time it is the Bosk commitment that interests us...

The Roots (Health) A farmers' proverb in Brancrug: 'What starts in the roots, ends in the sky.' A superstition goes with it, that before a child's first birthday you should leave her for a summer night sleeping in the roots of an apple-tree, to make sure she grows tall and straight-backed. Not many pay heed to the superstition now, but everyone remembers the proverb. It would probably count as Bosk.

...along with the Birdsong commitment for Leaves & Thorns:

Looking Up (Chor) The gardener's first lesson is this: look up. What starts as weather ends in the world, what starts as sky ends in the soil. This is what the birds know, and the birds know most things first.

As beneath, so above. What is a tree but a throne to birds, and what is Sky but a crown for birds? What begins in sky ends in soil, and so the first lesson of the gardener is to look up.

Nectar is the pulse of the seasons, the ripening, the wild vigor of new life. Sky is the principle of balance and harmony, mathematics and law—moderation, but also music. The wind in the branches, the bird in the nest, the lightning-strike that fells the tree and lets in the sunlight so that new flowers can grow. I rest my case.

& Fin. (ominously) for now.

I would apologize for the sheer amount of things I've glossed over things to the tune of "but we don't have time for that now" but in my defense, 1. I'M FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE (this post is 8.2k words long) and 2. I have half of a far more comprehensive disquisition regarding the various shadows-under-the-boat we carefully ignored in this post sitting in my drafts; perhaps a quarter of it is complete; it is pushing forty thousand words in length, so 3. It Will Happen Again.

Tune in next time for: VAMPIRE SUN, EGG MOON, & ...THAT GUY.

[simulanissolutions]

In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) have made significant strides in transforming industries, education, entertainment, and even healthcare. While both technologies are often grouped under the term extended reality (XR), they represent distinctly different experiences. This detailed comparison will explore both VR and AR in terms of their definitions, differences, applications, advantages, challenges, and potential future directions.

[couragecomesfromwithin]

polin love scene 🪞

now I haven’t seen much discourse about the nudity in Ep 5 particularly, but I have heard how some fans have been disappointed with how much was “teased” versus what they feel we deserved. maybe there was more and it was cut back, maybe they were respecting boundaries while trying to still satisfy fans I don’t know… But I do just want to acknowledge in fact how lucky we are. How proud we all should be, of both of them.

But Nicola. Beautiful, radiant Nicola Coughlan.

This woman had already shared her anxieties and boundaries around what was pitched in the book vs what she would be comfortable doing, long before it was posed or undertaken. I also want to remind you of the obnoxious, rude and disrespectful discussions and opinions she has already had to face about her body. Previously and still most recently. She put that all back on the line like never before undertaking and exposing so much in that scene. Naked. Not in some bitty show or a stage where it is only to a privileged ticketed few. But to a worldwide phenomenon.

This woman’s image will likely land on porn and xxx websites. It shouldn’t, but it will, alongside other actresses who have given similar performance simulations. And she will be judged and belittled by small, horrid people hiding behind the anonymity of the interweb. Maybe they will not reach her directly. We can hope, but they will be out there-and in a way it never was going to be for the first two leading ladies. Because they fit within the superficial societal expectations of what constitutes beauty. And indeed they are beautiful, but not because of the size of their waistlines. This woman is beautiful, and bold and she chose to find the empowerment in undertaking that level of exposure. She chose to honour what was expressed in the book. What we got to witness , it has been a privilege, not something we were ever entitled to. She is not an adult entertainer, she is not an explicit model, she is an actor. A performer. A brilliant, vibrant one at that, and she is proud, and happy. We should be proud and happy. She has given us a gift, she has risked the vulnerability of more unwarranted, cruel opinions and commentary on her naked body. I am so proud of her, I am so proud of who she represents, all these beautiful, sexy women who do not fit within the unrealistic ideals of a world that equates the size of a dress, the numbers on a scale and the absence of “imperfection” to the worthiness of a person. A human being.

She is resplendent. Unless you have ever faced- even with the support of an intimacy coordinator- filmed nudity, as an actor, it is intimidating. It’s you, but not you, in all your naked glory, with nothing to hide behind but the belief and identity of being another person and an absolute trust in those you create that moment with. And with the advance of social media, reality tv and the internet clearly the world’s ability to see the distinct line between character and performer, has become increasingly blurred for the socially inappropriate. And they will tell you exactly what they think, without a drop of consideration or care…and whether you are doing it for the first time or twelfth time as you sit in a robe, very nearly naked, You will still have this small voice of “o god, am I going to regret doing this?” And you make a choice.

You choose to trust, in yourself and those around you... But this is captured, memorialised on film for better or for worse, forever. Your family may see the it, your future children, grandchildren. It may sit in the minds of strangers, people who you will sit opposite on the tube- and who won’t say a thing…Not that you may really want them to.. but you just may catch their eye, sparkling with recognition, and think to yourself ‘oh geez, what if what they are thinking about what I look like naked’…which feels stupid and shallow, but for such a moment as a nudity scene, it ultimately becomes part of your legacy- it stays with you. Your career…hell people may still bring it up again 30 years down the line on a chat show (👀..Brooke shields, Sharon stone…there are still female performers who’s careers are ultimately stalled and who are judged for undertaking such scenes, who find that suddenly they are no longer so respected) and to recognise that…that to do this, it’s still a big thing, and we still do it anyway, because you believe in what you are doing and why you are doing it, to take pride and pleasure in what you do and the stories you tell and the characters and experiences you bring to life… it is beautiful and worthy of a little respect and acknowledgement.

now I’m not saying we are wrong to have wished for more, or different…but I do want to recognise what we did get, and how incredibly lucky we are in that. We should be so worthy and accept with grace the beautiful performances and attentions as was clearly given by the whole cast, crew and production.

[doctor-hopper]

I'm really tempted to comb through his lines about luck and write meta on it, because even off the top of my head, looking only at DR2/Dangan Island content, it's like

His FTEs frame bad luck as being part of good luck: bad thing leads into something good enough to compensate

But he has at least one Dangan Island line where he anticipates something bad after experiencing something good

And interestingly considers nothing much happening to him to be bad luck in Dangan Island's ending, even though he had a good time, which warrants some unpacking (my current hypothesis is it's because his impending death is making him desperate to make his life meaningful, not 'waste' his remaining time)

Not all of his examples fall neatly into his luck cycle model, especially not the FTE version where the events are connected. The diagnosis and HPA admission were separate-ass events, in DI's ending he expected his convo with Hinata to go well because of the aforementioned general '''bad''' luck too, the events of chapter 5 are hard to sort into the model, some DI interactions make it sound like he just has extreme outcomes sometimes (eg. he'd win capture the flag first try every single time), etc etc.

I have a feeling at least some of the way he talks about his luck is copium, especially in his FTEs since he really had to focus on the idea of bad -> good in the killing game. But as you say, he could have been intentionally oversimplifying... and if he actually thought the cycle worked both ways, saying he lives in fear of bad things every time something good randomly happens might've veered too close to genuine vulnerability. Which he avoided (by his standards anyway- I think he lacked awareness of how bad the kidnapping + plane stories were) until the final FTE.

Either way, I definitely need to scrutinise his lines more :'D

A ton of good points! Komaeda’s luck is fascinating and nowhere near as clear-cut as he originally makes it sound. Fics where he tries to “game the system” and finally gain some sort of control over his luck are interesting—but honestly, I feel like he’s already been trying to do that for as long as he’s lived. And he exercises an impressive amount of power under those restraints! But…also.

As for anticipating something bad after experiencing something good, I do think the way Komaeda portrays the order of events is just what he tells himself and/or Hinata. In reality, good and bad luck are two sides of the same coin to him—the real important part isn’t the order, it’s that nothing good can happen without something bad happening too. Everything has a price. Luck is a zero-sum game.

(He touches on this again in 2.5 when he says there’s “a fixed amount of luck in the world” and so he’s content to suffer the bad luck for everyone else’s benefit. In the dream-world sim, the luck he experiences is apparently “ideal”, but it still has to exist. There still has to be an Omelas child of sorts. Komaeda would just rather it be himself.)

As for good being caused by bad vs. just following it, it definitely happens both ways and he’s definitely contradicted himself. Beyond that, even, there are cases in the game where it’s not totally clear what sort of cycle is involved in the luck he experiences. In 2-1, he draws the short straw simply because he wanted to. Was the bad…offscreen? Was it the killing game itself? Would “being forced to clean” actually count as bad luck even if he wanted it? Was it then followed by the good luck of finding the secret passage? People hypothesize that his luck works differently in the simulation according to his own belief, which would complicate things even more, but I’m sort of back-and-forth on that theory. There are arguably examples of luck working the way Komaeda claims it does in DR2, also—such as getting the Despair Disease the worst out of anyone thanks to his compromised immune system, but being able to discover in the hospital that Tsumiki was the culprit. ending up in the hospital but meeting a lovey-dovey nurse GONE WRONG

I’ve always read the Island Mode ending as copium myself. I do definitely think he was hoping for a chance to die meaningfully on the island, and I guess in his mind that could be bad luck, but it doesn’t really fit his model. The way he tries to nudge Hinata into agreeing it’s bad luck, the scene reads to me like he just needs to believe it’s bad luck so he can solemnly ask Hinata to be his friend. (And I think it’s notable that in the word he uses for friend here is 友達 tomodachi, which in this context could be understood as more of a personal friend—everywhere else, he’s used the word 仲間 nakama, comrades, to refer to the whole class as a unit.) And remember, being loved by someone is another way that Komaeda’s death could have meaning—so even if he didn’t end up in the climactic situation he was expecting, perhaps he’s realized there’s another way to get what he wants. :’)

But, yeah, what decides if something is good or bad luck for Komaeda though? I think even that’s not always clear to him.

I’ve heard the view that it “gives him what he immediately wants while taking away what is subconsciously valuable to him” (from TheAmityElf, I think) which is interesting, especially to play with as a writing tool, but not ultimately convincing. Some events could be loosely mapped to that pattern, but others contradict it a bit—you can’t tell me he just wanted money, and he did actively try to turn down his invitation to Hope’s Peak.

Which is now also making me think: Since the diagnoses and the invitation weren’t directly related, do you think he even connected them in his mind at first? What if he didn’t, and so he was afraid that by going to Hope’s Peak he would be invoking even more bad luck yet to come?

One more interesting dimension of his luck to think about is whether it hurts others vs. himself. In 2.5 it only hurts Komaeda, but that’s not quite the direct opposite of his real luck, because his real luck gave him cancer and dementia! However, it also does seem to be proactive in protecting him from actual death in both 2.5 and the rest of canon.

I’ll conclude this reply with this…relevant blackout poetry (blackout infographic?) I made years ago and which you suddenly reminded me of, lmao.

Silly coda: This is why Komaeda’s favorite word is eucatastrophe.

(…How lucky, then, that people say “Komaeda, eucatastrophe!” to him all the time!)