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Pet Theory about Spiritwebs and the Physical Body

Spiritwebs

Spiritwebs are the spiritual part of a person, sort of like a soul. Spirtwebs are made of pure investiture, exist in the Spiritual Realm, and are composed of a person's identity and connections. The spiritual realm does not have distinct times or places. This means that Spiritwebs do not have size or shape in the spiritual realm

Thesis

Spiritwebs have distinct parts, which relate to distinct parts of the physical body and Invested Arts can access the Spirtweb through the physical body.

Evidence

Shardblades

Shardblades cut the soul and paralyze the limb that is cut. If a shardblade cuts part of the central nervous system, the soul is completely separated from the body.

Hemalurgy

Hemalurgy can remove parts of one person's spiritweb and graft it onto someone else's spirit. This can be used to transfer powers such as metallic arts or sand mastery, innate abilities like strength or mental speed, or connection like connection to the land or a Nahel bond. Most hemalurgic spikes are placed near the central nervous system, especially those which transfer powers.

Allomancy

Allomancy iron and steal radiant from a person's heart, and aluminum around the head can block emotional Allomancy.

Cinderhearts and Yelig-Nar

Cinderhearts and Yelig-Nar crystals both replace the heart of their victim, consuming their identity and connections, and replacing them with connections with to Yelig-Nar or to other cinderheart hosts.

Analysis

A shardblade wound to the central nervous system being instantly, hemalurgic bind points being concentrated around the central nervous system, Allomancy working with the heart and head, and cinderhearts/Yelig-Nar crystals consuming the heart all indicate that the heart and central nervous system are conduits where the spiritweb interacts with the physical body.

Predictions based on Theory

If a shardblade cuts a limb with a hemalurgic spike in it, the hemahurgic effect will stop.

If a shardblade cuts a limb, it would be as if hemalurgic spikes where charged from bind points in that limb (Note: The hemalurgic table shows bind points in limbs, but those bind points are (to my knowledge) not used in the books. Also bind points to charge spikes may differ from spike placement bind points. This means cutting off a limb with a shard blade would only have a minor impact on innate abilities, and would almost certainly not affect powers. This note does challenge the disprovability of this prediction but I will still keep it.)

The heart will be central to future spiritual realm based arcana, especially if it has to do with mind control or mental manipulation.

people with [breath] who lose a limb to a shard blade will lose breath proportional to the amount of their body mass that is removed (this assumes Breath is evenly distributed within the physical body, which may not be true even if it is evenly distributed within the spirit web. It maybe be proportional to the amount of spirit that gets cut off which would bias areas with more spirit, such as those with many hemalurgic bind points.

Allomancers will lose Allomantic strength proportional to the amount of body mass removed with a shard blade. (This is subject to the same restrictions as above, and the assumption that Allomantic strength is proportional to the amount of preservation investiture in someones spirtweb. I believe this was confirmed but I don't have a citation. If it wasn't confirmed then I am extrapolating based on the effects of burning lerasium.)

Undertext

Feel free to add an edit with something that needs to be considered to improve the theory in this section. Please write the most recent cosmere book at the time your writing and please no spoilers for unreleased books.

Ex.) (book), (relevant example or criticism)