Ascension

Ascension is the process of going to Vanaheim to meet and talk to either Terim or Tarim, depending on the individual's belief system. Several failed ascensions happen during the course of the series: Cerebus' ascension to the moon and his meeting with the Judge in Church & State II and Cerebus and Cirin's ascension and meeting with Dave in Reads.

Daves Notes

Church & State II Q&A with Dave

• "I assumed that these Ascension rituals had been going on for some thousands of years, always with the gold sphere being needed to trigger the event. Weisshaupt just added his own innovation of determining and/or having revealed to him that the size of the sphere was irrelevant. It didn’t need to be the size that Cirin was later attempting, which I assumed would be the norm, it just had to be a gold sphere. The idea being that because of the extended period of time over which these Ascensions were taking place various innovations would be incorporated (“let’s try a larger sphere”) and gradually become the new norm (“the sphere has to be larger”). It would depend on what you blamed the failed Ascension on. The sphere wasn’t big enough, the sphere wasn’t perfect enough. God only knows what it was when it started or what it was that actually would work. Of course judging by the result—Cerebus’ tower actually got off the launch pad—you’d probably be safe in assuming that Weisshaupt was onto something. Which would have been disastrous had the city of Iest actually survived. Anyone capable of making a gold sphere could initiate the launch sequence. A flawless sphere of the size of Weisshaupt’s wasn’t any big trick. A flawless sphere the size that Cirin was attempting was a virtual impossibility."

• Q5a: Is the rising of Cirin and Cerebus an Ascension?

DAVE: Yes.

Q5b: Where was the gold?

DAVE: The gold was the large sphere that Cirin was trying to make as the Ascension was imminent.

Q5c: Where's the tower? If it is an Ascension (and, actually, even if it isn't), can you compare it to previous ones and talk about Ascensions and their meaning within the greater Cerebus Novel? (i184)

DAVE: It was a different sort of Ascension from the one depicted in Church & State. The core elements are always there but they enact themselves in different combinations. Weisshaupt thought the gold sphere could be carried. All it needed to be was round and made of gold. Cirin thought it needed to be huge largely because of Cerebus demanding that everyone bring him all the gold. She thought that he was privy to some hidden knowledge about the Ascensions and leaped to the conclusion that what he knew was that the sphere needed to be huge. It never occurred to her that he wanted all the gold just have all the gold. In this instance the Throne Room, the Church and the wall of the upper city exploded into small fragments and the tower was the narrow column atop which was the throne itself which ascended whereas in Church & State the tower itself which was the wall surrounding the upper city ascended. Everyone tries to guess what the right combination is. Sometimes as in the Women volume, the tower just falls over. I discussed the meaning elsewhere in these questions, I'm pretty sure, referencing Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. The idea of heaven being "up there" and there being a stairway or a means of ascending into heaven, whether it's Jesus at the end of Mark's gospel or Muhammad's Night Journey, it's a pretty universal concept which I tend to view as being metaphorical as I think I've also said elsewhere. I think our progress is more transformative, analogous to the caterpillar turning into a butterfly with the originating state and transformative states being too drastically different to share any frame of reference so I think the idea of heaven being "up there" tends to be a placeholder concept for the transformative state and a misunderstanding of what earth's atmosphere is which is what I read in Genesis.