lockedtombtheories

[lockedtombtheories]

After reading some NtN discourse, which is all about Jod, like I get it but someone start discourse about the Angel or something so we have variety. But anyway, there’s a context I feel is missing for the Jod discourse, and it’s, 1.There is a centuries long history of Māori healers who suddenly found themselves gifted with miraculous powers to heal. 2.New Zealand has a history of sending police and government forces to kill Māori healers.

Americans when they think of police raiding ‘cult’ compound are probably imagining Jonestown or those US full of guns fortified cults from TV and that is how Jod’s healing and the raids that lead to the meatwall and dead cops are being framed but from the Prophets of the 19th century, the invasion of Parihaka or the hunt for Te Kooti all the way to the Tūhoe Raids of 2007, NZ police when they surround and raid are there for colonial purpose. And the way the healing part of John’s story is explained, word spreading and travellers amassing, it could have come out of a textbook of Rātana or Te Māiharoa. In NZ, police being massed to raid a ‘cult’ lead by a Māori miracle healer, has different bagage from the US police surrounding a fundie cult in gun country.

#john gaius #aotearoa #new zealand #history

[lockedtombtheories]

TLT Name Graphs Masterpost

Harrow & Gideon

Camilla & Palamedes

John

Ianthe & Corona

#names #analysis lists and graphs #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #camilla hect #palamedes sextus #john gaius #ianthe tridentarius #coronabeth tridentarius

[lockedtombtheories]

Tate u are a locked tomb enjoyer and poetry understander do you know how the metre works in the Noniad im rereading Harrow and im DREADFUL at following metre unless it's assonance rhyming

HI YES the noniad my best friend the noniad! it is in dactylic enneameter! which as it is used in harrow means every line has nine feet, and each foot can be either a dactyl (— u u) or a spondee (— —), except for the last two in each line which are always — u u | — x (— is a stressed syllable, u is unstressed, and x can be either).

e.g.

I am the | Emperor's | Hand; do | not thou per|sist in this | combat; | matchless am | I with the | long blade—

— u u | — u u | — — | — u u | — u u | — — | — u u | — u u | — —

there is also Often (but not always. but definitely enough that i noticed it) a diaeresis (word ending coinciding with foot ending) after the sixth foot which is. very funny to me. because dactylic enneameter is Not A Thing That Anyone Really Writes In Ever, but dactylic hexameter is the metre of greek and latin epic poetry and tamsyn muir and classics We Know About This. so the sixth foot diaereses + a noticeable number of lines having spondees in the sixth foot means that those lines read like lines of dactylic hexameter with like. an extra bit tagged on at the end. to me. but maybe i have just read too much dactylic hexameter idk

#ninth house #ortus nigenad #poetry

[lockedtombtheories]

So we've all heard that the Mithraeum is named after the temples of the god Mithras, who was depicted in temples in one of his key moments: the tauroctony (killing a bull). Haha, John, very funny cow joke.

But these images in Mithraism aren't just a guy killing a cow. There are also a bunch of other animals assisting, all possibly representing constellations. One ancient philosopher said a mithraeum was meant to be an image of the cosmos.

One theory about Mithraism suggests that it was rooted in Platonic ideas about cosmology - and that certainly tracks as far as relevance to Jod goes.

The ancient world had a geocentric understanding of cosmology: that is, they understood the sun to circle round the earth. In doing so, it followed a path of twelve constellations.

We understand today that the earth wobbles on its axis and that this can affect when equinoxes fall. In the ancient world, they originally thought the cosmos was eternally fixed.

The constellations referenced in a tauroctony are those that would have been on what the ancient cosmological model understood as the celestial equator during the 'Age of Taurus' - the period when this celestial equator passed through the Taurus bull. This directly preceeded the 'Age of Aries' during which the cult of Mithras began. It's worth noting that the next of these astrological ages would be the 'Age of Aquarius'...yes, that groovy Age of Aquarius where in popular belief there's the dawning of weird abilities and human mastery of the earth... Eh, I'm sure that's not relevant here...

One theory about the centrality of this shift from Taurus is because, unlike earlier theories that the planets themselves were gods, when this shifting of the equinoxes was discovered, it was thought to point towards a more powerful god who could control them. The theory goes that killing the bull - i.e. the literal shifting of the cosmological axis, moving from the Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries - symbolises this power over the cosmos. (You can see why this might also appeal to a guy who literally ate and then played dolls with the planets and then declared himself a god.)

Another part of this theory is that previously there had been a sense that the souls of the dead ascended to immortality through a convoluted passage through the stars. A god with such cosmological power would, it was thought, also have the power to convey a soul safely after death.

Mithras is often depicted holding the cosmological axis or the earth, or as Atlas holding up the sky. He is also depicted being born from a rock, a symbol of the cosmos - bursting it asunder, he is greater than the cosmos: his dominion is beyond it. Jod, the Lord Over the River, certainly makes a lot of claims about his abilities over the realms of death beyond the mortal plain.

For all the trappings of Christianity in the Nine Houses, it's interesting how in-depth a joke about a sexist mystery cult "the Mithraeum" turns out to be.

#john gaius #roman mythology #the mithraeum

[lockedtombtheories]

Ok so im antichrist gideon anon my bad i only noticed this rn.

Ok so technically, from a catholic point of view, alecto technically fills more requirements for being God than John does. Most relevant for us rn, the requirement she fulfill is the tripartite god (which im unsure is actually the term in english), ie: the father, the son, and the holy spirit, or alecto, nona, earth.

What does this make John? Lucifer. John was chosen by the earth for a task because he was her specialest little guy (Angel-era) fucked up massively, destroyed the world, got humanity kicked out of "eden", and even now torments their descendants for the same reasons he did then, is, technically, a False God, and depending on which interpretation of Lucifer's actions and background you have, actually does have similar reasons to John (At least regarding rage at the unfairness, him and his buddies getting fucked up for it, his buddies becoming "demons" like him, ie necromancers. Idk if lucifer was an environmentalist.)

Now, Gideon! As we have established in this allegory John's Lucifer, she does get the Antichrist treatment automatically, but she also has ascended to a place of social prominence, her showing up as John's daughter has coincided with stuff you can technically argue sorta relates to the Armageddon (the demons being released, the war against demons, the fucking possession stuff which may qualify as a plague) and she also distracts the followers of Actual God (Get in line thou big slut), drives them to wickedness and to harm others and themselves (Harrow, lyctorhood, their rivalry, the lobotomy), but she's also necessary so people can, yknow, get into heaven and for things such as the apocalypse to happen (Protagonist— I mean her blood opens the tomb and that's needed for God Alecto to wake.)

Anyways this was prompted by me stumbling across the term Lesbian Jesus again, pausing, and asking myself "Is she, though?" Which through this very well organised essay we have determined, she is not.

Nona is the one who's lesbian jesus.

this is a GEM of a thought to receive in my inbox I'm honoured you graced me with it! the part of me who was obsessed with Paradise Lost at age 17 loves your argument for Lucifer = John.

I think TM treats catholic theology in the same way she treats most of her influences, picking and choosing what to keep so but anyway catholic lore expert @monstrousgourmandizingcats get in here. do you have thoughts 👀 🙏

#christian symbolism #gideon nav #kiriona gaia #alecto the first #nona of new rho

[lockedtombtheories]

You know how it goes: through some incredible circumstances, God and a young woman living under the shadow of an oppressive empire have a metaphysically unusual baby who grows up to be a general nuisance, won't stay dead, and sports a few additional holes...

It's the third Sunday of Advent and I'm a little concerned Bible studies for weird goth kids might be turning into a series... Let's talk about the Blessed Virgin Mary and Commander Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity.

Wake was probably never described as "gentle", "meek", or "mild", but there are a few similarities: distinctive outfits, snazzy shrines, commitment to putting down the mighty from their seats, and of course babies with great and terrible destinies niftily conceived without sex.

On the topic of conception, let's clear up a common, uh, misconception: the term "immaculate conception" does not refer to Mary becoming pregnant with Jesus. It's Mary's own conception.

Why are we talking about how Mary was conceived and what does this have to do with lesbian necromancers?

To answer that question, we have to go back further still, way before Mary's conception. Back to these guys and their unfortunate snack cravings:

Remember how last time we talked about the concept of being in a state of grace? Well, the Christian read on Adam and Eve is that a state of grace was, as it were, the factory setting for humanity. They were fully in tune with God, there was no sickness or death, there was no sin. Until, that is, the whole unfortunate business with the apple. The first sin. The world is fundamentally altered. Humanity is expelled from paradise, burdened with sin, death, disease, patriarchy, and work. Worse, this sinful human nature turns out to be sexually transmissible: every human being is born tainted by this "original sin" of Adam and Eve.

This is why Catholicism is so big on baptising babies: even if they're many years off being able to commit any sins themselves (a sin has to be something consciously chosen and understood), they're still contaminated by that original sin of Adam and Eve. Baptism is understood to erase original sin, wiping the slate clean.

Bear with me, we'll be back to necromancers soon I promise. Have a picture of Mary beating up the devil while an angel holds baby Jesus:

OK, but what does Adam and Eve's danger snack have to do with Mary's conception?

The "immaculate conception" refers to the idea that unlike every human being between Adam and Jesus, Mary was conceived without the contamination of original sin. The rationale for this is complex, but essentially boils down to something like the saving power of Jesus not being bound by piffling things like time and space and thus saving his mother before her own conception and allowing himself to also be conceived and born sinless.

But the important bit is that something specific about Mary means that she is uniquely able to be pregnant with Jesus.

You may be starting to guess where this is going...

Because while unconventional pregnancy seems to have been the plan from the get-go for Jesus, it was not with the artist formerly known as The Bomb:

“I had the baby,” said Wake. “The baby I’d had to incubate myself for nine long fucking months, when the foetal dummies these two gave me died.”

“Oh, God, it was yours,” said Augustine, in horror. “I thought you’d used in vitro on one of Mercy’s—”

“I said they all died,” said Wake. “The dummies died. The ova died. Only the sample was still active, no idea how considering it was twelve weeks after the fact, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“So you used it on yourself,” said Augustine. “Anything for the revolution, eh, Wake?”

We have to assume the foetal dummies plan was hatched by Mercymorn, a brilliant scientist with a myriad of experience. If the problem encountered by Wake were as simple as Lyctoral infertility, I suspect Mercy would have spotted that long before.

But what do Wake and John have in common that Mercymorn or any of the other ova-having residents of the Mithraeum did not? They are both (to some extent at least) factory setting humans: unlike everyone else in the Dominicus system, they never died and were resurrected, nor are they the descendants people who were. John's abilities, while macabre, are not straightforwardly the necromancy otherwise practiced in the Houses. That necromancy is a direct result of one specific act of taking that resulted in the very nature of the world changing: a thanergetic system, inhabited by human beings who, necromancer or not, are fundamentally tainted by thanergy and by the after effects of that action of John's. You might call it a sin. An indelible sin. He does.

It's not an exact parallel, but necromancy certainly occupies a space not dissimilar to original sin: the result of a single action, tainting every descendant of its progenitors regardless of their actions of abilities.

And then enter Gideon, born in space away from the thanergetic energy of the Dominicus system to a mother lacking the 10,000 year intergenerational burden of the resurrection and necromancy. The child of Jod, born to die.

#commander wake #christian symbolism

[lockedtombtheories]

*Harrow the Ninth spoilers*

In the Mithraeum, Ianthe was teaching herself to cheat death by experimenting on apples:

Harrow was chillin in Ianthe's room before the universe's worst dinner party and she ate one of the apples. W-wha?! Harrow does not just nonchalantly. Eat. Food.

What does it mean???

There's a parallel with Persephone, who rejects food while in the underworld but finally eats from a pomegranate, which traps her there with Hades for part of every year. By eating Ianthe's apple, has Harrow bound them together? Or is Jod analogous to Hades in this comparison, and Ianthe merely his minion? Not to mention other instances in folklore where eating food in fairyland traps you there.

Then there is Eve eating forbidden fruit* from the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden, at the coaxing of the serpent. Is Ianthe the serpent, encouraging Harrow to sin by arranging the opportunity to kill G1deon? Though that act does not expel her from Jod's grace.

I dunno my dudes. I love the symbolism in these novels that is so heavy handed but at the same time can be compared to a whole array of mythology and classic literature. I have more thoughts on Magic Fruit, but these are the most obvious atm.

-

*The tradition of referring to the forbidden fruit as an apple is merely a headcanon of the Bible fandom.

#harrowhark nonagesimus #ianthe tridentarius #christian symbolism #greek mythology

[lockedtombtheories]

Do you think the Lyctors’ sainthood is referring their cavaliers? Since the cavaliers are martyrs, essentially, and the link between martyrdom and sainthood is very prominent in Catholicism. The fact that their saintly titles relate to their cavaliers makes me think that John is recognizing that. I know that you can become a saint if you perform a miracle, but due to the fact that a murder/sacrifice is what propels you to lyctorhood, I feel that the martyr aspect is what is most important.

Yeah, I think you're right. The sacrifice of the cavalier is what confers sainthood, and that's why John gave them their saint names to honor the cavaliers.

I can't speak with authority on the connection to Catholicism, not being Catholic myself, but I think you're onto something with the themes of martyrdom. Although speaking of miracles, John did say at Cytherea's funeral that he had been to Rhodes "to see the miracle". The impression I got was that the miracle was necromantic aptitude, which had only just begun to spread through the Houses a few hundred years after the Resurrection. In that case, each of John's saints requires both a martyr and a miracle. He's a demanding god.

#og lyctors #lyctorhood #christian symbolism

[lockedtombtheories]

hey who wants a quick rundown of what we do/don’t know about the events in Gideon the Ninth between Chapter 37 (which ends with harrow cradling gideon’s body) and the Epilogue (which starts with harrow waking up on the Eberos)?

cuz (for my own theories im making) i organized the information and added a list of conclusions i think we can draw. just in case anyone else finds it helpful, i decided to post it here, so check it out:

here is what we know about the locations and statuses of everyone at the end of Chapter 37:

here is what we learn in the Epilogue:

here is a list of relevant information we learn in Harrow the Ninth:

okay so a certain set of events needed to happen to make this all possible. looking at the puzzle pieces, here is some likely inferences i think we can make:

The BoE arrived prior to the Cohort going down and searching the area. There’s simply too many overlapping locations at the end of Chapter 37 of who the Cohort was able to collect and not collect for everyone to have been present when the Cohort came down. The most likely conclusion we can draw is that Mercymorn rendezvoused with BoE, and they came to an arrangement that resulted in the survivors + the corpse of Wake’s daughter being given to the BoE. Then, the Cohort arrived and collected the remaining bodies and the Lyctors (Cytherea, Ianthe, and Harrow) in addition to Wake (who is in Gideon’s two-hander).

Harrowhark and Ianthe were both likely unconscious for this. For one, the epilogue starts when Harrow wakes up on the flagship, which obviously means she was unconscious. Two, it’s highly doubtful she would let herself be separated from Gideon’s body. My vote is that Mercymorn knocked Harrow out. As for Ianthe, the last we know of her she was siphoned by Cytherea, which could have caused her to be unconscious. im inclined to accept this, as i have a hard time believing Ianthe would have willingly allowed Corona to be separated from her to go with a rebel insurgency group.

Camilla Hect must have personally gone to the sickroom at some point. Obviously she collected Palamedes’ remains. Additionally, someone must have collected Gideon’s rapier from the scene for it to eventually end up Corona’s possession. Considering BoE did not take Gideon’s two-handed sword along with her body (if they did take her body), it is unlikely they would have taken her rapier. It was most likely either Camilla or Corona who took it. It is unknown how Camilla knows the Cohort took the rest of Palamedes.

but we also have some stuff that goes unaccounted for but is potentially tied to these events:

- a curious side note, harrow says “the Sixth House cavalier was only injured when I left her”. it’s kinda unclear what “left”exactly that means. when harrow went out of the bone cocoon to fight cytherea? or did harrow physically leave the garden and camilla?

- ianthe is never shown to search for coronabeth in htn. again this strikes me as remarkably strange and out of character. ianthe repeatedly is shown to be concerned for her sister, accounts for instances of if harrow physically meets corona, but yet shows no attempts to locate her? yeah, something is going on there. "see a man about a queen" yeah okay hmm.

- we never get an explanation about why harrow instructed herself in her lobotomy letters to never let the two-handed blade touch skin. at the start of htn, wake is still in the blade. presumably (somehow) harrow is aware of this and that is why she instructs herself

- we dont know what happened in chapter 11 in htn when harrow awakes after stabbing cytherea with the two-hander (allowing Wake to transfer). harrow has no memory of how she got there

- the emperor knows about the desolation of the ninth house, a fact that harrow is unsure how he knows. the three other people aware of it at canaan house (silas, colum, and gideon) are all confirmed dead

- ianthe is never given a motive for lying about cytherea's body to harrow

- it is highly implied that harrow knows about perfect lyctorhood (palamedes gave her his notes on it and says that she, of anyone, could have figured it out)

- another thing im curious about is harrow telling ianthe that she asked for her help because she knows what it’s like to be “fractured”. what is this referring to? it’s only a few days after the events of canaan house, is this a comment on her arm? on corona? something else?

anyways that’s all the major stuff i think is possibly related. im currently hammering out all these pieces in some theories,,, but i thought id just post all of this in case anybody was interested!

#harrowhark nonagesimus #blood of eden #camilla hect #judith deuteros #the work #unanswered questions #STILL unanswered questions smh

[lockedtombtheories]

Has anyone else noticed or talked about Camilla Hect being on the spectrum, or is it just gonna be me?

Everything about her character jumped out at me as soon as I read it.

Flat, expressionless affect even when she’s FULL of emotion.

Restless rhythmic movements when standing still

VERY blunt speech, will very frankly state things that people don’t have the first clue how to take, with no regard for social mores

Often just won’t say anything at all (going nonverbal for their first several weeks of captivity according to Judith)

LASER FOCUS when she’s set her mind to something, like if this girl has a mission she is getting it done. If you’re her most trusted person in the world and you give her instructions to collect your bones and say you’ll be waiting in the river of the dead, she will accept this as Fact, and she WILL make it happen.

Honestly has trouble trusting people and probably wouldn’t even bother getting to know new people at all, if Palamedes weren’t such a bastard about making friends all over the place.

All I’m saying is, Cam is One Of Us, and I will die and be raised again on this hill.

#camilla hect #character analysis #happens to be one of my favorite posts

[lockedtombtheories]

Canaan House is The Tower, Silas Octakiseron is the Hole

Let me explain.

How is Canaan House described in Gideon the Ninth?

Large, imposing, made of white and shining dirty white stone, sitting on the water. Gideon couldn't see over it, or around it. An awe-inspiring sight.

How is Canaan House described in Harrow the Ninth?

Among other things, it is said to be a tower. The tower. The bottom of the tower is the lower levels of Canaan.

How is the Tower described in Nona the Ninth?

Large, imposing, made of dirty-white grey stone, sitting on the River. Nona can't see how high it is, or around it. A terror-inspiring sight; a sight recognised by her top thoughts and bottom thoughts.

What happens when Nona/Alecto nears her 'original' body?

Her middle thoughts crawled into her top and bottom thoughts. For a moment she thought she’d die of it. “There’s a box,” she said, “and … there’s someone in the box who isn’t me. I’m me. I don’t know who’s in that box, not really, only—when you open it—I’ll be gone, because I can’t survive … knowing. And I think—inside that box—there’s something that looks like a girl…”

She starts to remember who she was. Nona's top and bottom thoughts correspond to one or more people who recall Canaan House/The Tower.

May we remember for a moment who died in Harrow's body? Who, at the end of Harrow the Ninth, witnessed Alecto's face as she drowned? Who was incompletely eaten, and may persist in said body as dredges, who had seen Canaan House and died there? Gideon Nav.

Top and bottom thoughts recognise it, middle thoughts do not. Alecto remembers the Tower, Gideon remembers Canaan; Alecto remembers Canaan, Gideon remembers the Tower; Nona knows fear.

What does Varuun say of the Tower?

Varuun, using Judith as his mouthpiece, says nothing of the Tower. He says speaks of their tower.

“They concoct their own vengeance,” said the Captain. “Their justice is not my justice. Their water is not my water. I came to help. I am made a mockery. The danger is upon you, and you do not even know … they are coming out of their tower, salt thing. There is a hole at the bottom of their tower. I will pull their teeth. I will make it blank for you.”

Who are they? They seek vengeance, justice, and lie in a water that does not belong to Varuun. It is their tower.

The realisaiton I had here is one I have to attribute to @the-sword-lesbian, who pointed out how the ten billion, unresurrected, are likely vengeful; They is humanity: their tower is Canaan House, their water is the River, and the vengeance they concoct is against the one who presides over the tower, who placed them in those waters.

The justice they seek is for themselves, the ten billion victims of Emperor John Gaius. The justice Varuun seeks is for the salt thing, the victim of Emperor John Gaius, Alecto.

What is the hole in the bottom of the Tower?

If the Tower is Canaan House, then Teacher's warning to Harrow was more prescient than we could have ever known:

Ten thousand million, a long-winded way of saying ten billion.

“You’ve been trying to commit suicide by cop ever since I found you, Wake. I know when someone’s trying to get me to do something, and you’re acting like a woman who very much wants me to end her life.” “Telepathy,” she said. “Did the ten billion give you that too?” “Wish they had,” said the Emperor.

He said, None of us wanted to actually nuke anything. But a nuke’s good blackmail, right? A nuke adds a lot of pressure, right? The people who knew it was there, they knew that if we talked about having a nuke everyone would find out who gave us a fucking nuke. So we said to our client, Pan-Euro cannot be allowed to let these people through. They’re cutting and running. They’re leaving ten billion people behind to die, having stolen financing and support and materials. They’re leaving us to drown. And we said, We don’t want to make a scene, but … He said, None of us wanted to actually nuke anything. But a nuke’s good blackmail, right? A nuke adds a lot of pressure, right? The people who knew it was there, they knew that if we talked about having a nuke everyone would find out who gave us a fucking nuke. So we said to our client, Pan-Euro cannot be allowed to let these people through. They’re cutting and running. They’re leaving ten billion people behind to die, having stolen financing and support and materials. They’re leaving us to drown. And we said, We don’t want to make a scene, but …

Ten billion unfed ghosts: never resurrected, never reclaimed from the River, left to sink into the abyssal depths. How do we see ghosts outside the River? As Revenants.

How do the devils work?

“They bit him,” said the corpse prince, as though nobody had spoken. “I mean, they hit him—they don’t have to bite. It’s revenant magic. They’re waiting for him to die so they don’t have to work so hard. Heal him up now, and they’ll still ride that wound all the way into his hideous old body and I’ll get to kill him myself.”

The first victim of devil possession we see is Colum Asht. In Canaan; In the Tower. He kills Silas, albeit with his sword, but we know that weapons can act as a thanergetic link for a revenant. The devil in Colum was purged by Ianthe.

But what of the one in Silas?

Silas' corpse is the hole

“Those were dead already,” Kiriona interrupted. “The dead ones move differently. You realise the ones you shoved off the tier probably just got back up again?” “Can the living ones be cured?” asked Paul. “You can’t cure this,” said the Prince. “It’s spirit shit … possession. You can ward people so they don’t get grabbed—if you’re really good—but otherwise, chop them up and burn the bits. That’s the cure. Civilian or Edenite or House, it makes no difference.”

Nobody warded Silas. Nobody chopped him up, burnt the bits. He was left, as a dead thing, at the bottom of Canaan, the Tower. Left in a haunted place, filled to bursting with the sedimental dead of the Resurrection, the sum of all necromantic transgression: the hole through which the dredged devils may flow.

Canaan House is the Tower, Silas Octakiseron is the hole.

#the devils #canaan house #the resurrection #silas octakiseron #colum asht #eighth house #ressurection beasts #also I LOVE when bits of a theory just feel like. oh yeah I guess they did tell us that directly I just wasn't listening

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So, it's the last days and a weird-looking guy called John is yelling about the end of the world.

AKA, it's Advent and we've reached the stage of Alectopause where I'm apparently writing Bible studies for the weird goth teens that hang out in graveyards... So let's talk about portentious guys called John and why a nun might have joined a necromancy cult.

Anyway, you know Advent, the cheerful and cozy time when we all think about cute baby Jesus as we get ready for Christmas, right?

WRONG

It's currently the second Sunday of Advent, and in lots of churches that follow the liturgical year, people will have been hearing about John the Baptist today (Me: "John". My phone: "Gaius?". Me: "John the-". My phone: "Necromancer?").

Without going into too much detail, John the Baptist is important because he's a prophet that points to the coming of Jesus. He first does this rather impressively in utero, but is probably best known for wandering the wilderness wearing camel hide and eating locusts, shouting about how the end is nigh and, hence the name, baptising people to cleanse them from their sins. People are pretty impressed by all this and start asking him if he is the promised messiah or one of the great prophets come again. He answers no, his job is to point towards one greater than him. He baptises Jesus, the heavens open, and not long afterwards John annoys the authorities and ends up with his head on an ornamental platter.

Now John the Baptist obviously isn't the main Biblical John evoked by John Gaius. That dubious honour probably goes to the beloved disciple John the Apostle, also known for The Gospel According To and The Apocalypse Of, aka the Book of Revelation, the Bible's account of the end of the world.

But John the Baptist (no, autocorrect, not "John the Necromancer") is relevant too, and not just because he's a guy called John, chosen by a higher power to lay the groundwork for better things to come and who falls afoul of the authorities with dramatic consequences.

Let's cycle back round to Advent for a moment. The reason Advent can both be aww cute little baby Jesus and also WHERE ARE YOU GOING WHEN YOU DIE?! is because in Christian theology, Jesus' birth and the end of the world are linked: the first and the second coming of Christ.

In Nona The Ninth, we learn that John and his friends are living in a world on the edge. Without some incredible plan - the cryo ships, the promise of FTL - everyone is going to die. Humanity has rendered the world uninhabitable. Although we get very few details of the broader geopolitical situation, we have to assume it's one rife with natural disasters and conflict.

In the Bible, Jesus talks about a world with famines and earthquakes, wars and rumours of wars, where to find yourself in those days with children would be a tragedy and to be pregnant even worse (maternity problem, anyone?). Specifically, this is when he talks about the signs of the end of the world and his second coming.

So what about M-'s nun? The first time we meet her is when she's advising John against his all-day Jesus Christ Superstar healing ministry.

And John's anxiety about meeting her is pretty apt. He says: "I was worried I was going to get the Antichrist bit from her too". Note the "too" - by this point, John has already been accused of being the Antichrist. Why? Because alongside those rumours of wars and earthquakes, Jesus gives another sign to watch out for: false prophets.

But M-'s nun saw John and his powers and - for reasons we never learn - believed they were miraculous, a gift from God. She appealed to the Vatican to investigate and recognise this. And her presence and this campaign apparently made a significant impact in reducing some of the issues they were facing. Somehow, she met awful, smarmy John and his corpse buddies and thought she was seeing the hand of God miraculously at work in the last days.

This bears repeating, because I've seen suggestions that she believed he was God, or was somehow converted to the cause of necromancy, but at least by John's narrative it's much simpler than that: right to the end she's praying for him in very Catholic terms to find clarity in his purpose.

This is the last we see of her:

She just smiled at me. She said, John, don’t misunderstand. I want to help you. I truly believe that in our most terrible hours we don’t instinctively reach out to God; we push ourselves away from Him. Don’t feel bad for not rising heroically to the occasion right now. Fear doesn’t help us achieve a state of grace; it deafens the heart. John, I truly believe you can save everyone. So concentrate, please. She said, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. And she shot herself.

While obviously you are probably not walking a straightforwardly orthodox path if you're shooting yourself to help the leader of a self-proclaimed necromancy cult locate the soul, her language here is very focused on the Catholic understanding of sin and death. A "state of grace" refers to the condition of your soul when it's not burdened with serious sins. It's the state you're in after you're baptised or after you've been to confession. Being in a state of grace is one's soul being on a wavelength with God; it's the necessary state to enter heaven.

And the Hail Mary? Catholics believe that Mary has the power to intercede for them with God. And the most important moment at which she could intercede would be at the point of death where the state of your soul determines your eternal destination. This isn't a wacky necromancy cultist talking. I suspect she sees this less as a suicide (which the Catholic Church has historically not had the most nuanced views on...) than a fulfilment of Jesus' teaching to keep his commandments and that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends.

We're not privy to exactly what she thought, and I don't think anyone's suggesting her approach was entirely orthodox, but if he's not the Second Coming, and he's not the Antichrist, and there are wars and rumours of wars and floods and earthquakes...did she see him as a prophet of the apocalypse? A sort of John the Baptist of the end times, who in demonstrating the reality of the soul would bring people to Christ before He came again?

Unfortunately for M-'s nun, John was not what she fervently believed him to be. And unlike John the Baptist, who said no when asked if he was something he was not, John used M-'s nun's death as a springboard to claim the trappings of both divinity and Catholicism for himself.

Unfortunately for John, judgement is coming in the form of an angry teenager Harrowing Hell and the very power he usurped, armed with a very big sword.

#john gaius #cristabel oct #pre resurrection #christian symbolism

[lockedtombtheories]

Me: huh, it's interesting that Muir specifically mentions that Harrow is the 311th Reverend Mother of the Locked Tomb, that seems very specific. I should look that up.

Me: *looks it up*

Me: [loudly redacted cursing]

--------

311 is one of those special numerology numbers, because Muir loves to layer meaning into everything like she's making an onion.

Specifically, 311 in numerology is what's called an "angel number". (HM)

One in these numbers carries the meaning of new beginnings. (HMM)

Three in these numbers is associated with harmony, balance, and joy. (HMMMM)

Putting this together and 311 in numerology means that change is coming, get ready for enlightenment whether you want it or not. (HMMMMMMM)

(Bonus: 11 is considered to be a powerful number relating to "twin flames" aka two halves of the same soul who've been split apart and straining to come together-- oh look it's necromancers and their cavaliers it's the gnosticism again layered inside all the other gnosticism once more we are an onion) (HMMMMMMMMMMM)

#ninth house #harrowhark nonagesimus #numerology #christian symbolism

[lockedtombtheories]

What do the Fifth House actually do?

Sure, yes, ghosts and tradition and the Heart of the Emperor, and Watchers Over the River - but none of those things give you the kind of assets that mean you can dress your cavalier in a coat that "probably cost more than the Ninth House had in its coffers" for a dinner party.

It's made clear very early on that the Fifth are a power to be reckoned with. When they first receive the letter about the Lyctoral pilgrimage, Gideon assumes it would be on the Third or Fifth. Harrow, meanwhile, has frequently-repeated anxieties about the Ninth being subsumed by the Third or Fifth, to the point that she worries that the anniversary party invitation may be an attempt to wipe out the other Houses. Teacher describes the Fifth's relationship with the Fourth as "hegemonic". The Fifth loom so large in the cultural imagination, they even inform the name of the made up porn magazine that Gideon offers to Crux.

The links between the Third and the Fifth that both Gideon and Harrow make seem to reflect both the fact that these two Houses have particular power and influence, but also that they frequently cooperate. Judith writes about the close cooperation of the Second, Third, and Fifth, a relationship which becomes a source of tension as the scions seek to establish authority after the Fifth are murdered. Judith says:

“The Fifth are dead. I take authority for the Fifth. I say we need military intervention, and we need it right now. As the highest-ranked Cohort officer present, that decision falls to me.” “A Cohort captain,” said Naberius, “don’t rank higher than a Third official.” “I’m very much afraid that it does, Tern.” “Prince Tern, if you please,” said Ianthe.

Which makes it sound as though Abigail might technically have been considered the highest ranking person at Canaan House (likely because she was head of her House and not an heir in waiting like Judith or Coronabeth), and that following her death there is some question as to whether the Second or the Third should take control, but notably no suggestion that anyone else might.

We know what the Second do: they are the leaders of the Cohort and the Bureau, the military and intelligence that forms the core of imperial expansion. Most of the information that we get about the other Houses talks only about their cultural or ritual roles in the empire - we get very little in the way of gritty details of what happens outside of the Dominicus system.

We know a little bit about what the Third does - according to Tor they are cultural trendsetters and players in soft power, but the one detail we get in GTN itself is revealing: when Gideon imagines her glorious future in the Cohort, one of the assignments she considers boring is the prospect of being "in some foreign city babysitting some Third governor." Which makes it sound rather like the Second are conquering the planets and the Third are then running them. But the books are even lighter in details about what the Fifth do, beyond ghosts and manners.

However, there is one suggestive detail: an important topic in HTN is stele travel - the necromantic FTL used by the Nine Houses. And Mercymorn, in describing a stele, specifically states that Fifth House adepts are required for their construction. Which rather makes it sound like the Fifth have a monopoly on the manufacturer of the technology required for FTL travel. Now that in and of itself could be the basis of their enormous wealth - selling aerospace tech to an ever expansionist military is probably quite lucrative.

But there's another element of House imperialism that only gets mentioned in passing that doesn't seem to be entirely accounted for, which Judith describes in As Yet Unsent:

"Their other line of attack is the business contracts. They claim that the services asked of them by the Emperor were set down in lifetime contracts by previous generations, who assumed the contracts would be terminated upon the Emperor’s death."

There are obviously some unanswered questions about the imperialist project of the Nine Houses - both Augustine and Coronabeth question quite why it works the way it does - but from the above it sounds like in many respects it functions exactly as you would expect an empire to: as a vehicle for the exploitation of others' resources.

Perhaps the Cohort themselves administer these business contracts. Perhaps they fall under the purview of the Third House planetary governors. But if you're exporting resources from the living planets of your empire to the mostly desolate planets of the Dominicus system, you're going to need some FTL ships and a whole lot of bureaucracy.

And if there's one other detail that we get about the Fifth, it's that there is something significant about the political power of their bureaucracy. As Judith puts it: "Quinn himself is a Fifth House bureaucrat with all that entails."

Are the Second, Third, and Fifth so close and so powerful because they form the bedrock of the empire: the conquest, control, and exploitation of planets beyond the Dominicus system?

#fifth house #the empire

[lockedtombtheories]

how do we know in the books that john is indigenous? can you say more about how his indigeneity is important to his story?

hello! so there is a word of god post on race (doesn't mention John but mentions that Gideon is "mixed Maori"), BUT I frankly don't think word of god statements are worth any weight without actual in-text support (see: the "dumbledore is gay" situation). SO!

Specific evidence that John Gaius is Maori, as revealed in Nona the Ninth:

When he is listing his education, John mentions having gone to Dilworth School (John 20:8). Dilworth is an all boys boarding school in Auckland and accepts students based on financial need instead of academic or sporting achievements. Demographics appear to be about 70% low income Maori boys, indicating that it is highly likely that John is Maori

John reports that P- said he looked like a "Maori-TV pink panther" (John 15:23) when his eyes turned gold. Maori TV is a TV station that is focused primarily on Maori culture & language revitalization, with presumably all or mostly Maori hosts, and tbh I don't see why P- would say this unless John was himself Maori

John uses a te reo Māori phrase ("kia kaha, kia māia") (John 5:20) when he is saying goodbye to the corpses in the cryo lab before the power is shut off. Though it is possible he said this as a non-Maori kiwi, but in combination with the previous two points of evidence I think this all very strongly points to him being Maori

He also renames his daughter Kiriona Gaia, "Kiriona" being just literally the name "Gideon" in te reo Māori

TLT is not a series that hands you anything on a silver platter but to ME this is all pretty solid proof

Why is this relevant to The Locked Tomb?

In Nona the Ninth, we learn that before he completed apotheosis and ate the solar system, John was basically trying to save the earth from capitalism-caused climate change. Climate justice and the rights of indigenous people over their own land are deeply tied together, in the same way that climate catastrophe and capitalism/ imperialism/ colonialism are linked. disclaimer that this is NOT my area of study and others have definitely said it better; this is just the basic gist as I understand it, but on quick search I found some sources here and here if you want to do some reading.

TLT is not a series that hands you anything on a silver platter, but i don't think it is a stretch to see John as an indigenous man trying to save the earth and getting ignored and shut down at every turn by primarily western colonial powers (PanEuro, the USA) who declare him a terrorist and then as a reader thematically connecting that to the experience of indigenous climate activists IRL

there are absolutely TLT meta posts that have discussed this before me; tumblr search is nonfunctional and I have been looking for an hour and a half and cannot find anything specific even though i KNOW i reblogged multiple posts about this in the first few weeks following NTN's release. sad & I am sorry

I think that by the time the books take place, John is 10k years removed from the cultural context he grew up in, with the Nine Houses having become a genocidal colonial power in their own right (with more parallels to be made between John's forever war for the resources of literal life energy and like, oil wars), but I also think that John Gaius is a fictional character who can represent and symbolize multiple different things in service of telling a story. (not to mention the potential thematic parallels being made to how oppressed people sometimes are pressed into replicating the power dynamics of their oppressors and continuing the cycle--now that is a tumblr post i KNOW i read last year and definitely cannot find right now, once again sad & I am sorry)

How Radical Was John Gaius, Really is a forum thread that was locked by the moderators after 234534645674564 pages of heated debate

#john gaius #new zealand #pre resurrection #aotearoa

[lockedtombtheories]

okay okay so corona and ianthe's mother's name is canonically "violabeth" (whence "coronabeth" gains the "beth"). viola is latin/italian in origin, meaning purple; corona means crown or wreath. congrats, your third house monarch (whose assigned house colour is purple) is called purplebeth and crownbeth

but also! in pondering this, my mind was also drawn to viola from shakespeare's twelfth night - one half of a pair of twins, forced by circumstance to take on the guise of her brother for her own safety. we talk and talk abt who out of ianthe and corona came up w the "corona should pretend to be a necromancer" scheme, and also who enforced it; but is it not fucked up if it was violabeth? (especially considering ianthe specifies their father as the one who "wanted a matching set") and if it wasn't, isn't it still fucked up that, based on literature that existed before the houses, their mother's name is all but a prophecy?

#names #third house #shakespeare #literary references

[lockedtombtheories]

Clear as mud! But I expect nothing less from a Homestuck 🫡

#analysis lists and graphs