Addressing a criticism

In the first post I ever made on this blog I stated that I could teach the fundamentals of sympathy better than Master Hemme could ever dream to. I've been called out several times on this, saying I may be smart but Hemme has been teaching sympathy longer than I've been alive. I will now prove you all wrong by teaching the fundamentals of sympathy right now. New students: You're welcome.

However, a word of warning: Sympathy is dangerous. If you draw too much heat from your blood, you can catch what is known as binder's chills and you can die. If you try to move two much heat at one time and the overload is put into your body, you can die. I once tried to make a gust of wind binding the air in my lungs to the air outside, and I almost suffocated. If you only learn one thing from this blog, learn this: Sympathy is dangerous, and carelessness can get you killed.

Okay, onto the basics.

Sympathy is, basically, binding two things together through sheer force of will. It's easy to comprehend with physical objects; if you bind two twigs and lift one, the other lifts with it, if you light one on fire, the other gets hot, etc. The specifics of how this is done cannot be taught through text, but the essence of it can. There are four fundamental aspects of Sympathy that everyone should know off the top their head and in their sleep. They are:

1. The Law of Correspondance -- "Similarity enhances sympathy."
   What this basically means is, the more alike two things are, the more efficient the sympathetic link is. If you take the branch of a tree and break it in two, those two pieces of wood are very similar; they are roughly the same size, they are the same material, they even came from the same source. If you bind them, you will get a very strong link, say, 80% efficiency. On the other hand, if you take a piece of twine and a large iron ingot and try to bind them, you will get a truly terrible link. No part of the twine is even remotely similar to the ingot; the ingot is bigger, sturdier, heavier, and made of completely different material. You'd be lucky to get 5% efficiency.
2. The Principle of Consanguinity -- "A part can represent the whole."
   This is harder to understand than the law of correspondance but easier to explain. Basically, if I take a branch off a tree, and heat the branch, I can transfer that heat to the tree through a second binding. This is the same principle behind a mommet. A lock of your hair, or a drop of your blood, is used to represent you, which is then used to cause bodily hard to the target. Do not do this.
3. The Law of Conservation -- "Energy cannot be created nor destroyed."
   Remember earlier when I mentioned inefficient bonds? Now if you're a clever student, you've no doubt asked: What happens to all the energy that isn't transfered? Simply put, it is released into the air. Consider this: if you bind an iron drab to an iron drab and lift one, theoretically it would weigh the same as two iron drabs (although realistically you wouldn't have a perfect bond and it would weigh more). If you bind the twine to the iron ingot, a combined weight of about one tenth stone, and you try to lift it, it would probably feel like you were lifting about 10 stone of iron. The same waste in energy applies to all forms of energy, be it heat, light, or sound. The important thing to understand is that when you "lose" energy it's not gone, it's going into the air. This is also why sympathy is dangerous; if an inefficient heat transfer goes awry, the heat might not go into the air. It might go into you. There was an incident recently where a student tried to force open a door using sympathy and ripped his arm off because of the overflow of energy.
   
   Be careful.
4. The Alar -- "The riding-crop belief."
   This is the single most important aspect of sympathy. This is the force of will involved in binding two things. If you take Master Hemme's class he'll no doubt have you memorize all sorts of different Alars, and when you get started doing sympathy you'll ritualistically chant them under your breath every time you do even a simple binding, but that is all formality. The only truly important aspect of the Alar is the belief. To light a candle, all you must do is believe extremely hard that the candle is already lit. (I say that lightly but it's actually incredibly difficult and takes years of practice.)

And there you have it, the basics of sympathy. That's approximately 5 span of Hemme's classes, right there on the paper. Have fun wasting your time trying to impress him as you wonder desperately why he hasn't actually done any sympathy in class.

--Kvothe

This is a mommet. Don't make these, they are dangerous and can kill people and are highly illegal.