Let us explore the geometry of ideas as the Hive do and harness truth itself. [b]Shapes: Ideas[/b] Throughout the Books of Sorrow and other grimoire acquired after the arrival of the The Taken King, there are innumerable references to "shapes." Oryx, The Taken King himself, is also known as the King of Shapes. Examples: The abstract concepts of slaughter and victory is described as a shape. [quote]It’s done. Eir and Yul feed on the Leviathan’s carcass. Xivu Arath has made a temple of the Chroma-Admiral’s impaled corpse. Below us, Savathûn’s poisons stain the Ammonite home sea black. Their screams flavor the void. The Traveler has fled. Do you understand, Auryx? Do you thrill at the secret, Savathûn? Do you relish the edge of this truth, Xivu Arath? Do you see the beautiful [b]shape[/b]? (XIX: Crusaders)[/quote] The abstract concept of brutal ultra-Darwinian competition for survival is a shape. [quote]And if life is to live, if anything is to survive through the end of all things, it will live not by the smile but by the sword, not in a soft place but in a hard hell, not in the rotting bog of artificial paradise but in the cold hard self-verifying truth of that one ultimate arbiter, the only judge, the power that is its own metric and its own source—existence, at any cost. Strip away the lies and truces and delaying tactics they call ‘civilization’ and this is what remains, this beautiful [b]shape[/b]. (XXXII: Majestic. Majestic)[/quote] The abstract concept of lies have shapes that can be chewed and converted into weapons like poisons by a Hive wizard. [quote]Gather up the[b] Lie Shapes[/b] Neither eat nor mock them, as you crave Instead, learn to chew them into poisons (Balwûr)[/quote] [b]Shapes: Physically Concrete[/b] What exactly are these shapes? At first they seemed like a strange way of referring to ideas/concepts, but it became pretty clear that these ideas have a physicality to them, which makes sense given the examples of in which concepts (like lies mentioned above) are being used as objects. Similarly, the Hive and the worms can kill axioms, or abstract self-evident truths. They can kill a description of a thing to change the physical thing. [quote]You have written eleven axioms describing the ascendant places, our throne world. You have announced that you will kill one of these axioms, as Akka would kill the truth, and in mantling Akka you will become a God, as I am. (XXXVII: shapes : points)[/quote] I will now provide a step-by-step example with the concept of death to demonstrate that the Hive make the intangible into concrete tangibiliy. We know that to Oryx, death is a shape since he described a tooth he received from his daughters as being shaped like death. [quote]What have you made for me? It is a tooth shaped like death! (XXXVII: shapes : points)[/quote] Death is an idea. Death is not a physical thing, but simply a concept describing the end of chemical processes that drive biology. It is not a physical object you can hold, just like concepts like truth or justice. Interestingly though, this is exactly what the Hive are able to do: they can separate death from their bodies as if it were physical. [quote]“If we can separate our deaths from ourselves, and hide them, we will be hard to kill.” (XXXVIII: The partition of death)[/quote] Toland further supports this notion of tangible intangibility when speaking of deathsinger Ir Yut. He says she harnesses the essence of death as an object, despite the fact that death is just a abstract concept. [quote]The song is death. To hear it is to die. To know the words is mortal. Oh, good point, Eriana, death is just a word, isn't it? A catch-all term for the failure to go on, nothing spiritual, nothing with its own quiddity. [...] But what if what if what if, shhh listen, what if death were [b]reified[/b], described in its totality, made autonomous and universal, separate from any context or condition? What if She could invoke the ending of anything? (Ir Yût, the Deathsinger)[/quote] *To reify is to make something go from being abstract to concrete. [b]Bridging Intangible and Tangible[/b] In another topic, [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/170958432/0/0]I discussed paracausal properties of the Traveler and the Darkness that their respective followers tap into[/url]. Paracausal power is that which bypasses physical laws and appear as magic. Examples include the creation of pocket universes to act as throne worlds for Hive gods to be reborn into upon death, or Oryx's power to turn life into his Taken. The list of such powers goes on. I believe that it is the paracausal properties of the Darkness that are accessed by the Hive that allows them to make intangible things tangible, or access an existing tangible version existing elsewhere. To prove it, look at the grimoire card of a Taken. The cards describe them picking up knives shaped like intangible concepts, which gives them new physical abilities. [quote]There is a knife for you. It is shaped like [not alone]. (The Taken: Acolyte)[/quote] [quote]The Hive entity Oryx/Aurash is deploying a paracausal ontopathogenic weapon that infects and subverts Ecumene forces. The weapon operates on individual targets. Targets are abducted and returned as compliant Hive slaves with inexplicable and physically illegal abilities. (XXVII: Eat the Sky)[/quote] The power of Taking is paracausal, and the power of the Taken has been described as being physically impossible (thus paracausal). From the intangible idea-shapes of their knives, they gain tangible power. This connects the paracausal powers of the Darkness directly to the ability to use intangible concepts as tangible physical tools. [b]Where Do These Shapes Reside?[/b] Things don't exist as both intangible and tangible in our world, so where is it that they exist? One possibility is the Hive throne worlds, but it could also be somewhere else entirely. This may have some connection to what lies [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/183462595/0/0]beyond the veil[/url]. Past the veil is somewhere outside of our universe; this is where the Vex pass through when they use gates to travel across time and realities. It is the place the Awoken queen and her techeuns see into. Similarly, thanatonaut warlocks go there when they commit suicide so that they may see glimpses of truth, and the wings of the sunsingers allow them to fly beyond it as well (citations for all this is in the linked thread). [quote]Your bullets reach beyond the veil to strike enemies at their purest essence. (Mos Morsus III description)[/quote] Perhaps the purest essence of existence is the shapes; the dual-natured substances that exist as both ideas and physical. Paracausal forces like the Darkness (the source of the Hive's power) may well exist in the space beyond the veil, so it would be fitting that the shapes they manipulate exist there. Mara Sov has been said to be able to call the power of the starlight and the dark to aid her (Ghost Fragment: Fallen 4), and we know she sees beyond the veil, so it makes sense that she would call these forces from beyond the veil. The Black Garden also exists beyond the Veil, and a shard of Darkness was the Heart ([url=http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/08/24/what-s-going-on-in-destiny-s-story-anyway.aspx?PostPageIndex=5]as suggested by a GameInformer article based on conversations with Bungie[/url]). [b]The Darkness Is a Shape[/b] I don't know if all physical objects or living things have one of these shapes anyway (I'd say yes since the Mos Morsus III description implies essences of beings existing beyond the veil), but but as described by Oryx, The Deep is definitely a shape. [quote]Now I may speak to the Deep, the beautiful final shape [...] (XXVIII: King of Shapes)[/quote] We know the Deep is another name for the Darkness. [quote]I don’t know where the Darkness-which-is-the-Deep came from (XLIX: Forever And A Blade)[/quote] Now... look at what the Pujari believed regarding the Darkness. [quote]The Pujari Position describes the Darkness as a force with both physical and moral presence, an actualization of evil. Pujari art depicts the Darkness as a great storm, or as a change in conduct, a corruption that emerged from within and poisoned the Golden Age. (The Darkness)[/quote] A moral (intangible) and physical (tangible) entity. The dual nature of shapes, and the fact that the Darkness is a shape leads me to believe that the warlock Pujari was among the ones who got it right about the Darkness, unlike Saint-14 (lol titans, am I right?). If the the Heart of the Black Garden is a piece of the Darkness ([url=http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/08/24/what-s-going-on-in-destiny-s-story-anyway.aspx?PostPageIndex=5]as suggested by a GameInformer article based on conversations with Bungie[/url]), and the Darkness is a shape, then we know the Darkness (and perhaps by extension other shapes) exist beyond the veil as I speculated earlier. More on The Darkness and the Final Shape [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/180867823/0/0]here[/url]. [b] For more theories by me, I refer you to the [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/183288968/0/0]Collected Treatises of The Warlock KAGEHOSHI[/url].[/b]