How did Inuquisitor Greyfax question Saint Celestine's divinity? Isn't the holy flames, the wings and halo...

How did Inuquisitor Greyfax question Saint Celestine's divinity? Isn't the holy flames, the wings and halo, and literally being empowered by the Emperor a dead giveaway? Wouldn't she even feel the Emperor's divine blessing from her or something.

She was just messing with her.

Isn't Greyfax a top tier telepath?

>Isn't the holy flames, the wings and halo, and literally being empowered by the Emperor a dead giveaway
Look at Thorianism or Horusianism as traditions in the Inquisition. They know how to get there without the Emperor being involved at all; the rest is showmanship.

That said, time to put on the /u/ goggles.

>How did Inuquisitor Greyfax question Saint Celestine's divinity?

By being a huge paranoid shithead, that's how.

That said, she is technically right. Celestine is not divine. Nothing in 40K is divine; everything that appears to be so is just Warp physics doing weird stuff. Even the gods are not actual divine beings, merely psychic entities that feed on the passions and thoughts of material beings.

It's not even very likely that Celestine is powered by the Emperor. For all we know she's just suped up by the collective faith of the SoB's fanatic Waaagh! effect.

To be fair, couldn't it also be said that a good chunk of the Emperor's power now is the collective worship of mankind, rather than his own divinity.

>Isn't the holy flames, the wings and halo, and literally being empowered by the Emperor a dead giveaway?
Except flames, wings, and a halo can all come from chaos if they wanted to, there's no way to verify it's literally from the Emperor. In one of the Gathering Storms Greyfax says herself that she's seen too many occasions where supposedly benevolent miracles by "saints" ended up being the machinations of Chaos under a pretty wrapping.

Godness in 40k is a gestalt thing, the diety becomes en-godened through the act of worship.

That's how she-who-thirsts was formed too I think.

Also: Imperial "Truth" BTFO.

Humanity deserves a god who isn't a fedora-tipping faglord but it's not the god we got.

One thing I always wondered, if this was true, if the Emperor would be slowly taking on elements of the mechanical Omnissiah.

Most imperial citizens are familiar with the Adeptus Mechanicus who run the machines on their world, and accept the idea of Machine Spirits. Many Techmarines fully beieve in the Omnissiah, and surely a number of the Cult Mechanius as well.

Whenever blessed machinery starts working again miraculously. I wonder if the Emperor could even speak to machine spirits as people believe he can.

Not that that stopped her from slicking off to Guilliman's returned, wrapped as it was, in the plots of xenos.

Guilliman is attempting to complete the project he failed at 10,000 years ago: to carve himself an empire, to sit upon a throne of his own, and to make of himself a god in the image of his creator.

This is blasphemy of the worst sort, and should he succeed at stealing from the Emperor the devotion that is by right His, the weakening of the Emperor will doom us all.

Literally purge all Ultramar.

>Imperial "Truth" BTFO.

The Imperial Truth, at least the religious aspect of it, was correct though.

There are no gods in 40K. Just gestalt psychic emissions. The 'gods' of 40K aren't truly diving beings, they're just otherwordly parasites. The Chaos Gods are for all intents and purposes just very powerful, eldritch aliens from another dimension, who feed on our dimension.

Correct in a way that ignores all of the actually-lived experience of actual people, sure.

Those who would rule must first seek to understand, this hubris and arrogance of The Emperor's assumption that all man could be as He is was a very nearly fatal flaw, for him and for all mankind.

All things a Daemon could also have.

In 40k that's not being paranoid, it's being smart.

The fluff and the authors of the setting outright says that the Imperial Truth was bullshit.

Even Girlyman THE MAN OF REASON AND LOGIC acknowledges the Chaos Gods divinity and is having a inner debate of whether the inhuman enthroned monstrosity that he once called father is a god or not.

The only reason he's not calling the Emperor a god is because he's still buttmad the Emperor is crazy and doesn't love him or anyone else, as person..

Chapter master Moloc pls go.

I think the Emperor loves people as persons.

Rowboat's problem is that he, and all astares (at least all astares beyond *possibly* scouts), are literally not people and, as such, outside the scope of His love.

It's because a lot of things/people have posed as holy in the past, on purpose or by accident.

The devil would appear as an angel if it meant he could convince people.

Part of her job is doubting and being precise and finding out liars and stuff. So it made sense to me.

>Those who would rule must first seek to understand, this hubris and arrogance of The Emperor's assumption that all man could be as He is was a very nearly fatal flaw, for him and for all mankind.

Yeah this is correct.

>The fluff and the authors of the setting outright says that the Imperial Truth was bullshit.

This ain't correct. The idea that reason > superstition is the core of the Imperial Truth, and it's true in 40K as much as it is RL. Most of the Imperium's suspicions and rituals are based on half-truths and misunderstandings, and would be more effective if these things were properly understood.

What HAS been stated as bullshit is the idea that there are no otherwordly entities or that the Chaos Gods don't exist. The idea that nothing is truly divine, though - that's a verifiable fact in 40K. Chaos Gods aren't gods, people just call them gods and worship them because they don't understand them. Even the Eldar pantheon aren't really deities, they're psychic constructs intentionally created by the Eldar as weapons, which eventually became the subject of worship after the race lost much of its history.

The Emperor hid the existence of the Chaos Gods because he didn't trust mankind to understand their nature and see past the illusion of divinity.

>I think the Emperor loves people as persons.

>He cannot afford affection – that is the honest practical for the impossible task that faces the Master of Mankind. He did not love His sons, He does not love men, but He does love mankind.
Or from the mouth of the big man himself:
>"THEN WE MUST BE MALEVOLENT TOO. FOR WE HAVE EXPELLED OUR SENTIMENTALITY LONG AGO. HOW ELSE COULD WE HAVE ENDURED? HOW ELSE COULD WE HAVE IMPOSED OUR RULE?"
>"YET BY VIRTUE OF THAT WE ARE PURE AND UNCONTIMINATED BY WEAKNESS. WE ARE GRIM SALVATION."'
>"NOTHING THAT SAFEGUARDS HUMANITY CAN BE EVIL, NOT EVEN THE MOST STRENUOUS INHUMANITY. IF THE HUMAN RACE FAILS, IT HAS FAILED FOREVER."
>"WHEN WE CONFRONTED THE CORRUPTED, HOMIXIDAL HORUS WHO ONCE USED TO SHINE LIKE HE BRIGHTEST STAR, WHO USED TO BE OUR BELOVED FAVOURITE - WHEN THE FGATE OF THE GALAXY HUNG BY A THREAT - WERE WE NOT COMPELLED TO EXPEL ALL COMPASSION? ALL LOVE? ALL JOY? THOSE WENT AWAY. HOW ELSE COULD WE HAVE ARMOURED OURSELVES? EXISTENCE IS TORMENT, A TORMENT THAT MUST NOURISH US. EVIDENTLY WE MUST STRIVE TO BE THE FIRECE REDEEMER OF MAN, YET WHAT WILL REDEEM US?"

In a way, BL made a surprising move in that, if Guilliman's not exaggerating, they made the Emperor capable of love, where he wasn't before. Before he basically endured because he has a compulsive need to fulfill his prime directive - to protect mankind at all costs, and that's it. He literally says he can't love anymore.
BL, usually obsessed with making the Emperor as shitty as possible, has given him love back, even if it's only love for mankind as a whole. and my cynical mind tells me that's going to tie into all the, no doubt idiotic, retcons they have planned for the final fight.

Except that implies that the Emperor had it beforehand, and it was only in confronting Horus that he was forced to expel it.

BL would have people believe he didn't have love in the first place. Probably because their fathers don't approve of their life choices.

One could argue that is what divinity is, especially in the 40K universe. The concept of divinity is idiosyncractic and yet a universal construct, even in our world.