KKC Theory Wiki

Jax's Eight Tinker Gifts Each Map to One of Temerant's Eight Magics

plausible symbolism · popularity 257 · 1 source thread

The eight rare items Jax receives from the tinker in Hespe's story symbolically encode Temerant's eight known magical systems.

About: Iax

Also involves: The Cthaeh, The Boy Who Stole the Moon, Sympathy, Naming, Sygaldry, Glamourie, Grammarie, Yllish Knots, Eight Magics, Denna, Kvothe, The Chandrian, The Amyr

The theory§

In Hespe's tale 'The Boy Who Stole the Moon,' a tinker gives Jax eight rare items, and the theory reads each as a symbol of one of Temerant's eight magics: the wind-up gear soldier for Sygaldry, the set of paints for Glamourie, the book of secrets for Alchemy, the piece of sky-iron for Sympathy, the folding house for Shaping or Grammarie, the jade flute for Singing, the box for holding names for Naming, and the impossible knot for Yllish knot-magic. The first four, granted alongside spectacles for Seeing, are cast as 'Seer' magics tied to the path of sight and the Cthaeh, while the latter four are 'Listener' magics, dividing Kvothe's road of seeing from Denna's road of hearing. Two gifts are read as especially loaded: the sky-iron echoes Sympathy's principle that a part can stand for the whole, and the name-box foreshadows Iax imprisoning the moon by binding its name. The tale's careful preservation in rhythm and meter, passed mother to daughter for generations, is taken as a sign it carries true and uncorrupted knowledge of Iax and the Creation War. The numbering is imperfect, since Rothfuss has given varying counts of Temerant's magics, but the fit is close enough to read the gifts as deliberate symbol rather than decoration.

Evidence§

  • I think Hespe's story of Jax is one of the few uncorrupted stories of Iax and the start of the Creation War that we have. … I think the tinker's gifts are a big clue to Iax's power.
    OP frames Jax's tale as preserved knowledge and the gifts as a clue to Iax's power. — u/chainsawx72
  • According to Rothfuss there are eight magics so far in Temerant, six named, one glimpsed, and one we haven't heard about yet.
    Establishes the count of eight magics that the eight gifts are mapped onto. — u/chainsawx72
  • A gear soldier that marched if you wound him. - Sygaldry … A bright set of paints with four different brushes. - Glamourie … A book of secrets. - Alchemy … A piece of iron that fell from the sky - Sympathy
    The four 'Seer' rare items each mapped to a magic, granted with spectacles for Seeing. — u/chainsawx72
  • Folding house - Shaping/Grammarie … Jade flute - Singing … Box for holding names - Naming … The impossible knot - Yllish knots
    The four 'Listener' items mapped to the remaining magics, unlocked only by the Listener. — u/chainsawx72
  • I connect the piece of sky-iron with sympathy, because sympathy means a piece of a thing can represent the whole thing, and I think a piece of the moon was involved in the literal stealing of the moon.
    OP grounds the sky-iron/Sympathy mapping in Sympathy's part-for-whole principle. — u/chainsawx72
  • It seems maybe she is perfecting the four Listener magics, while Kvothe is mostly learning the four Seer magics. … She cocks her head while crossing all of Severn Low to save a girl, the same odd head cock that the Chandrian do
    Splits Denna's road of hearing from Kvothe's road of seeing, citing the head-cock motif. — u/chainsawx72
  • They are definitely symbolic. … And Jax brought out the black iron box, closing the lid and catching her name inside. “Now I have your name,” he said firmly. … Jax's possession of the moon's name in a physical box is another way of saying that Jax takes the moon's name as his own
    Comment reinforces the name-box/Naming reading, tying the box to Jax binding the moon's name. — u/qoou
  • Rothfuss has always been vague with his magic-counting, so there are different estimates in different interviews. … you are kinda grouping the items in a way to fit the theory (which is never a good sign =)). You skip the first pack entirely, then you separate Sympathy and Sygaldry, which are known to be very similar, but you group Shaping and Grammarie
    CounterCounter: the eight-count is unstable and the groupings look stretched to fit. — u/BioLogIn
  • Where does Re'lar (Namer) fit in all of this? … Naming and Shaping should be in different classes as weren't they on opposite sides of the Creation War? … The part where Kvothe is an E'lir and Denna is a E'lthe feels really off.
    CounterCounter: questions the Seer/Listener split and where Naming and Shaping belong. — u/TheSenselessThinker

Book refs: WMF

Tier reasoning§

distinct theory; symbolic mapping is a reasonable fit, plausible holds

Source threads§