[2052] Treatise 8

[imaginaryfriend]

Oct 14, 2018 18:48:15 GMT @korba said:

I think the feather might likewise point out Kat's "poster-child" acumen highlighted by the Katurday chapter, contrasting it to the lately rather unfocused Annie, who was even forced to repeat a school year (that only induced further destructive drifting -- see "big dumb giant" page).

That would explain why the feather in #5 looks more like Antimony's hair color and/or a phoenix feather. Kat was more socially dependent on Antimony then but the next chapter was Ch.42 where Kat found out the love letter was from Paz.

[jda]

Regarding the peacock feather. good Old Wikipedia says:

The Great Work (Latin: Magnum opus) is an alchemical term for the process of working with the prima materia to create the philosopher's stone. It has been used to describe personal and spiritual transmutation in the Hermetic tradition, attached to laboratory processes and chemical color changes, used as a model for the individuation process, and as a device in art and literature. [...] It originally had four stages:
nigredo, a blackening or melanosis

albedo, a whitening or leucosis

citrinitas, a yellowing or xanthosis

rubedo, a reddening, purpling, or iosis

[...] Other color stages are sometimes mentioned, most notably the cauda pavonis (peacock's tail) in which an array of colors appear.

[liminal]

Oct 12, 2018 18:01:52 GMT keef said:

Oct 12, 2018 7:08:32 GMT liminal said:

Is that...Coyote's eye in Annie's stomach?

I don't see it, certainly not when looking at it this way:

I’m referring to his chest-eye.. It loses the pupil when he dies, and features prominently on Loup’s head.

[hp]

On the ladder, is it Juliette tho?

If so, she's clearly dressed as a typical representation of Jesus like she's helping Robot (Arthur?) ascend into heaven. That and the fact that the ladder goes all the way up should mean something related to robots being given souls by Kat making them organic bodies

OTOH... "Up" in the picture also happens to be "towards Annie's half", So that might also mean something

[arf]

zbeeblebrox said:

I think we keep collectively forgetting this isn't the kind of comic where ancient undead elves give powerful magic boons to the hero, it's a comic where a girl loses her hair clip and a zombie spends 50+ chapters trying to get it back to her.

A quote which summarises the Green Guy's bony finger pinning Annie's hair back just where her clip went (not the psychopomps, as some folk have suggested)

Another minor point: the motif on Annie's uniform matches Ysengrin's cloak. I suppose it demonstrates her ongoing loyalty to him.

[fia]

Two things:

Want to reiterate my speculation that this new feather is like the old feather, and is really intended as a Phoenix feather, as in that one previous Treatise; with the added green coming from Kat's use of the Diego arrow magic/programming. Recall Kat is seen by the robots as having brought the dead back to life. Maybe she'll do it again?

Also, just wanted to point out that the boat looks more like a canoe-type vessel, whereas Jeanne and Mr. Green left in a raft-type vessel. It may be that the world of the symbolic ignores these things, but it bears pointing out.

[fanofts]

Oct 13, 2018 16:47:08 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Oct 13, 2018 11:51:13 GMT pyradonis said:

Your link does not work.

Thanks, ProBoards ate it completely this time. Link is fixed.

Could you repaste the URL? For me the link is not fixed and only points to an irrelevant post in the same thread. Maybe remove the dots and slashes in case proboards is modifying them? Was it meant to link to https COLON SLASH SLASH en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatelaine ?

[keef]

Oct 15, 2018 13:17:57 GMT liminal said:

Oct 12, 2018 18:01:52 GMT keef said:

I don't see it, certainly not when looking at it this way:

SPOILER: Click to show

I’m referring to his chest-eye.. It loses the pupil when he dies, and features prominently on Loup’s head.

I see what you mean, but to me it looks like she holds a flame in her hand, surrounded by smaller lights.

[imaginaryfriend]

Oct 16, 2018 18:24:27 GMT fanofts said:

Oct 13, 2018 16:47:08 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Thanks, ProBoards ate it completely this time. Link is fixed.

Could you repaste the URL? For me the link is not fixed and only points to an irrelevant post in the same thread. Maybe remove the dots and slashes in case proboards is modifying them? Was it meant to link to https COLON SLASH SLASH en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatelaine ?

I fixed the original link but that doesn't change what's in quotes in other posts. Article is here at Collector Weekly: "The Killer Mobile Device for Victorian Women".

And yeah, Proboards sometimes truncates links. Or deletes them. Or substitutes a link to that thread or a post in the thread. Not every time, but every so often and they always look fine until you actually post.

[MarineMonarch]

To be honest, the fact that no one made this connection is half the reason I've joined this forum. Those pointy hypodermic needle-like pillars in the background? We've seen something like those before:



It's also present as a design element on Kat's etheric form on the next page and even on the original reveal in Divine. I also found the same imagery in the background of Robot's imaginings in New Data. They've also been noted to look like the shafts of feathers before, so they might be dual symbolism there since Kat's associated with birds so much? 

I've got no idea what's up with the one bone-like needle outside of what other people have said though, perhaps representing the transition into organic?

[Corvo]

Mar 26, 2019 15:45:40 GMT MarineMonarch said:

To be honest, the fact that no one made this connection is half the reason I've joined this forum. Those pointy hypodermic needle-like pillars in the background? We've seen something like those before:

It's also present as a design element on Kat's etheric form on the next page and even on the original reveal in Divine. I also found the same imagery in the background of Robot's imaginings in New Data. They've also been noted to look like the shafts of feathers before, so they might be dual symbolism there since Kat's associated with birds so much? 

I've got no idea what's up with the one bone-like needle outside of what other people have said though, perhaps representing the transition into organic?

Tony's fingers, I believe.
1040-1044, 1553

[saardvark]

Mar 26, 2019 15:45:40 GMT MarineMonarch said:

To be honest, the fact that no one made this connection is half the reason I've joined this forum. Those pointy hypodermic needle-like pillars in the background? We've seen something like those before:


It's also present as a design element on Kat's etheric form on the next page and even on the original reveal in Divine. I also found the same imagery in the background of Robot's imaginings in New Data. They've also been noted to look like the shafts of feathers before, so they might be dual symbolism there since Kat's associated with birds so much? 

I've got no idea what's up with the one bone-like needle outside of what other people have said though, perhaps representing the transition into organic?

and here's more Kat-Angel-needles...
www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1443

[saardvark]

scorpius.tiff (673.55 KB)

I think Scorpius is a better fit, star-wise. Starting with the triangular stinger-tail, youve got Shaula+Lesath (lambda + nu) [bright], kappa+iota [bright], unnamed (dim, at edge), theta (dim, just above the red surface), mu [brigt, a bit displaced to the left], epsilon (at end of chain), Antares (behind Kat's head, about at her nose, with rays projecting from it), then to the right of Kat, pincers pi (at bottom, bright), and beta (at top, above her head, dim) and scorp head delta (a bit displaced down, below head, dim). This perhaps makes Kat herself Antares = Anti-Ares, preventer of war. She stops Loup's attacks? She heads off a robot civil war peacefully?

[speedwell]

While we're adding stuff, I'm kind of surprised nobody's identified Annie's "light" as her solar plexus. This is important. One yoga site mentions that the solar plexus is identified with the element of fire, and states: The Sanskrit name of the solar plexus chakra, Manipura, translates to "lustrous gem." Located between belly button and the bottom of the rib cage, it governs our intentions for emancipation, our right to act, our duty for self-definition, and our ego.

We're benefiting a bit from hindsight, but I see all of these as major themes in Annie's twinship.

[Per]

Mar 27, 2019 15:16:44 GMT saardvark said:

I think Scorpius is a better fit, star-wise.

I think that if you can find a better fit than Bootes, then we have redundant constellations in the sky and somebody should be fired.

[DonDueed]

Mar 28, 2019 16:41:50 GMT Per said:

Mar 27, 2019 15:16:44 GMT saardvark said:

I think Scorpius is a better fit, star-wise.

I think that if you can find a better fit than Bootes, then we have redundant constellations in the sky and somebody should be fired.

Count me in Camp Bootes.  (Not boot camp!)

I find it interesting that it is shown rotated from its usual orientation, whether you consider Kat or Annie to be "right side up".  I wonder if there's a particular location on Earth, or a particular time of night, at which it would appear at the angle shown in the Treatise.  Could it be that we're supposed to think that Bootes is setting?

[DonDueed]

Here's another thought: the star to which Kat is chained is the largest of the stars depicted.  Could it be intended to represent Arcturus, i.e. the brightest star in Bootes?  It's in the wrong position -- the correct place would be behind Kat's head.  But maybe Kat has somehow pulled it out of its rightful spot in the sky.

If so, what could that signify?

Edit: one astrology-related site has this:

Boötes ~ "The One Who Is Coming"
The Savior in Pisces who frees humanity from subservience to the form

That does seem to fit with many of the theories about our Kat, especially if you replace "humanity" with "robot-kind".

[Per]

I'm so mad that the Wikipedia page for Arcas has an "In popular culture" section yet no mention of episode 6 of Little Witch Academia.

[Gemini Jim]

In Polynesian navigation, Arcturus is known as Hokule'a, the Star of Gladness. That might be an accurate description of Kat in relationship to Annie.




Of course, Hokule'a is also the "zenith star" for Hawaii. Kat is obviously part-Hawaiian.

[saardvark]

Mar 28, 2019 16:41:50 GMT Per said:

Mar 27, 2019 15:16:44 GMT saardvark said:

I think Scorpius is a better fit, star-wise.

I think that if you can find a better fit than Bootes, then we have redundant constellations in the sky and somebody should be fired.

Here is my take on the star-field as Scorpius:

treatise8_scorpio.pdf (365.1 KB)
scorpius2.tiff (673.65 KB)

(golden dots - size scaled to stellar brightness; compare with star map). For matches (or close matches) with Tom's stars, you've got open cluster M7 = star behind Annie's head, unnamed star (below that), lambda+nu (Shaula+Lesath) to the right of the ladder, somewhat displaced epsilon (or chain-yanked Antares?) near Kat's egg hand, and top to bottom behind Kat's head are omega1+2 (top dark star), pi (dark star just below head) and rho (above shoulder). Hidden by objects/characters are kappa+iota (behind Juliette), theta and eta (hidden by red-scorched earth), mu and zeta1,2 (forgot to mark, but below epsilon behind the moon), tau, Antares (alpha) and sigma (behind Kat's head (Antares on her nose!), unless Antares is chain-yanked!) and delta (behind bone needle). Theta might be displaced as the dark star to the right of Arthur, though that's a bit of a stretch. Dark stars at left edge are unmatched by real stars in this scenario.

Its not a great match, but I'd argue its at least as good as Bootes and maybe better, matching more stars and mis-matching fewer and leaving fewer un-accounted for.

[Per]

I can't see your images and I'm too lazy to download them, but it seems we may be talking about two different things? The lines and dots I marked in red in the picture you quoted are the lines and dots Tom had in white in the treatise, comprising a uniformly connected diagram. There are no mismatches to speak of with the Bootes diagram yinglung found. If you are looking for a second match among the big cartoony stars, it's certainly not impossible there is one, but I would think it slightly far-fetched and hard to verify/falsify given he marked the first one so clearly.

[saardvark]

Apr 19, 2019 19:10:56 GMT Per said:

I can't see your images and I'm too lazy to download them, but it seems we may be talking about two different things? The lines and dots I marked in red in the picture you quoted are the lines and dots Tom had in white in the treatise, comprising a uniformly connected diagram. There are no mismatches to speak of with the Bootes diagram yinglung found. If you are looking for a second match among the big cartoony stars, it's certainly not impossible there is one, but I would think it slightly far-fetched and hard to verify/falsify given he marked the first one so clearly.

yes, I think we are talking about two different things.  I'm talking about stars (which define a constellation after all) and you are talking about lines, I guess.  I agree that the lines fit Bootes better, but I was considering the stars as more  fundamental... I could be wrong I suppose!  In truth, the lines should connect the stars to  make the constellation, but Tom has either drawn Bootes (lines) with a lot of extra  stars, or drawn Scorpius stars and unassociated random lines.
Here are the images in another format (turned out kinda small for some reason):

[fanofts]

Apr 20, 2019 0:07:24 GMT saardvark said:

Apr 19, 2019 19:10:56 GMT Per said:

I can't see your images and I'm too lazy to download them, but it seems we may be talking about two different things? The lines and dots I marked in red in the picture you quoted are the lines and dots Tom had in white in the treatise, comprising a uniformly connected diagram. There are no mismatches to speak of with the Bootes diagram yinglung found. If you are looking for a second match among the big cartoony stars, it's certainly not impossible there is one, but I would think it slightly far-fetched and hard to verify/falsify given he marked the first one so clearly.

yes, I think we are talking about two different things.  I'm talking about stars (which define a constellation after all) and you are talking about lines, I guess.  I agree that the lines fit Bootes better, but I was considering the stars as more  fundamental... I could be wrong I suppose!  In truth, the lines should connect the stars to  make the constellation, but Tom has either drawn Bootes (lines) with a lot of extra  stars, or drawn Scorpius stars and unassociated random lines.
Here are the images in another format (turned out kinda small for some reason):

This could be a case of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia :

Per is talking about the white dots representing the stars of Bootes, with white lines connecting them. saardvark is talking about the yellow five pointed star shapes. The white dots do closely match the Bootes stars. I tried to get the yellow "stars" to match Scorpius and it's arguable if sufficient match. M7 is not a star but it is a bright open cluster - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_7 - and if we align it as in saardvark's PDF and stretch the treatise to fit Antares over Kat's nose we get this image I made in paint.net (indirect link: imgur.com/a/fsGL5ki ): With

So, with M7 and Antares so aligned, the only other yellow star close to a Scorpius star is first magnitude Shaula / 2nd magnitude Lesath. Fainter 3rd magnitude rho is also close to a yellow shape on the right above Kat's left shoulder. In my opinion (ex amateur astronomer) that triplet is too linear to yield unique angles (star trackers use more compact triangles) for a high confidence match. Out of curiosity I fed the pattern of treatise yellow stars here i.imgur.com/qY54ZfI.png into this online constellation matcher: nova.astrometry.net/status/2650114 - and it failed to find a match, others may have more luck, maybe trying with more stars/objects.

[saardvark]

Apr 20, 2019 2:58:48 GMT fanofts said:

This could be a case of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia :

Per is talking about the white dots representing the stars of Bootes, with white lines connecting them. saardvark is talking about the yellow five pointed star shapes. The white dots do closely match the Bootes stars. I tried to get the yellow "stars" to match Scorpius and it's arguable if sufficient match. M7 is not a star but it is a bright open cluster - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_7 - and if we align it as in saardvark's PDF and stretch the treatise to fit Antares over Kat's nose we get this image I made in paint.net (indirect link: imgur.com/a/fsGL5ki ): 
So, with M7 and Antares so aligned, the only other yellow star close to a Scorpius star is first magnitude Shaula / 2nd magnitude Lesath. Fainter 3rd magnitude rho is also close to a yellow shape on the right above Kat's left shoulder. In my opinion (ex amateur astronomer) that triplet is too linear to yield unique angles (star trackers use more compact triangles) for a high confidence match. Out of curiosity I fed the pattern of treatise yellow stars here i.imgur.com/qY54ZfI.png into this online constellation matcher: nova.astrometry.net/status/2650114 - and it failed to find a match, others may have more luck, maybe trying with more stars/objects.

Ah yes, thanks, the white dots too! Not just lines... Somehow I overlooked that.  But I was considering all 5 pointed stars, not just the yellow ones  ...  and I did note M7 was a cluster (no cheating!). If you include the "dark" stars also, you get an "OK"match for pi and omega1,2 as well. The white dots match Bootes stars well, I agree, but there are many other white dots which don't match actual stars (eg, the other two white dots near zeta, one much "brighter" than the line-connected zeta itself). It is not unreasonable to count both the "hits" and the "misses" (as I did for the stars).... tho perhaps Tom meant only the line-connected dots "seriously" and added the others for artistic purposes(?) 

(I think that might be why I overlooked the white dots at first; there  were so  many 'misses" that I figured they couldn't be meant seriously as "real" stars - so I looked at the big cartoon 5-pointed variety. ) 

OH, and thanks for the new word! Pareidolia....

[saardvark]

Apr 19, 2019 19:10:56 GMT Per said:

I can't see your images and I'm too lazy to download them, but it seems we may be talking about two different things? The lines and dots I marked in red in the picture you quoted are the lines and dots Tom had in white in the treatise, comprising a uniformly connected diagram. There are no mismatches to speak of with the Bootes diagram yinglung found. If you are looking for a second match among the big cartoony stars, it's certainly not impossible there is one, but I would think it slightly far-fetched and hard to verify/falsify given he marked the first one so clearly.

yeah, sorry Per, I misread/mis-assumed and thought you were using the  5-pt stars. The line-connected dots match do Bootes  nicely, I agree. The problem for me is there are a   lot   of  white dots (adtmittedly un-connected) which don't match any real star.  Artistic license? Maybe. Anyway, thats   why I concentrated on the  big  5-pt stars (yellow & dark)...

[madjack]

Ok as this started to take shape I realised I'd gone full on wildspec again but it's probably better off here with the rest of the treatise speculation.

With the Chapter 68 retrospective comes some concrete treatise info, including one thing I think most of us missed which was the chain around Kat's wrist was explicitly a binding of sorts.

To my thinking this confirms the chain represents Paz. Not just because it's got what looks like a bird on one end, or because one half of Paz' hyphenated surname is Spanish for chain.

The bindings represent leverage. While Annie's binding represents the threats Loup has made to her and the obligations she's under, Kat has never had contact with the Forest, which leaves the Court as a main suspect as to who'd want to control her. Juliette and Arthur have already stated that they wouldn't approve of what she's doing to help the robots out, and having the Court's entire menial workforce on her side is enough on it's own to make them concerned if they wanted to put the brakes on her work (even if that workforce is incapacitated for the moment). I think the other reason the Court would be wary of messing with Kat is Anthony. I suspect their decision to bring him back to control Annie has backfired on them big time. This is pretty baseless speculation, but I wonder if Tony, instead of just putting the reins on Annie, has also become another layer of insulation between her and the Court, and looks to have at least reclaimed some of the influence he had before he left and has extended this protection to Kat too.

So what do they use as a counterweight to someone with the support of two internal forces they can't ignore? They might have seen Annie as potential future leverage over Kat at some stage, but she proved uncontrollable, and with Coyote in her corner the risks outweighed the rewards. Enter her adoring girlfriend Paz, a girl from a poor family in Galicia who's family have benefited greatly from the financial support provided by the Court, and the education she is getting is far far far better than anything she could have conceivably gotten at home. Their direct control over her future and any future support they might send or withdraw is a lever to pull if they want to shut Kat's projects down (if they're even aware of them). It might also serve as a threat by proxy to Annie too, since Kat is the single most important person in her life.

As to why they'd even do this, I would expect some within the Court would have even been thinking in these directions even if Annie and Kat had never done anything untoward at all or if they were still ignorant of Kat's work, for typically despicable human reasons. Where there is no higher authority, bureaucratic influence and infighting are king.

[spritznar]

re: the chain as a binding on kat

there is a binding agreement that kat made recently, although it was glossed over and brushed aside pretty quickly...

edit: although that took place after the treatise page, but i recall tom saying somewhere that some of the treatise symbolism is foreshadowing of things to come